The Project Gutenberg eBook, Utopia, by Thomas More, Edited by Henry Morley
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Title: Utopia
Author: Thomas More
Release Date: April 22, 2005 [eBook #2130]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UTOPIA***

Transcribed from the 1901 Cassell & Company Edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

UTOPIA

INTRODUCTION

Sir Thomas More, son of Sir John More, a justice of the King’s
Bench, was born in 1478, in Milk Street, in the city of London.
After his earlier education at St. Anthony’s School, in Threadneedle
Street, he was placed, as a boy, in the household of Cardinal John Morton,
Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. It was not unusual
for persons of wealth or influence and sons of good families to be so
established together in a relation of patron and client. The youth
wore his patron’s livery, and added to his state. The patron
used, afterwards, his wealth or influence in helping his young client
forward in the world. Cardinal Morton had been in earlier days
that Bishop of Ely whom Richard III. sent to the Tower; was busy afterwards
in hostility to Richard; and was a chief adviser of Henry VII., who
in 1486 made him Archbishop of Canterbury, and nine months afterwards
Lord Chancellor. Cardinal Morton—of talk at whose table
there are recollections in “Utopia”—delighted in the
quick wit of young Thomas More. He once said, “Whoever shall
live to try it, shall see this child here waiting at table prove a notable
and rare man.”

At the age of about nineteen, Thomas More was sent to Canterbury
College, Oxford, by his patron, where he learnt Greek of the first men
who brought Greek studies from Italy to England—William Grocyn
and Thomas Linacre. Linacre, a physician, who afterwards took
orders, was also the founder of the College of Physicians. In
1499, More left Oxford to study law in London, at Lincoln’s Inn,
and in the next year Archbishop Morton died.

More’s earnest character caused him while studying law to aim
at the subduing of the flesh, by wearing a hair shirt, taking a log
for a pillow, and whipping himself on Fridays. At the age of twenty-one
he entered Parliament, and soon after he had been called to the bar
he was made Under-Sheriff of London. In 1503 he opposed in the
House of Commons Henry VII.’s proposal for a subsidy on account
of the marriage portion of his daughter Margaret; and he opposed with
so much energy that the House refused to grant it. One went and
told the king that a beardless boy had disappointed all his expectations.
During the last years, therefore, of Henry VII. More was under
the displeasure of the king, and had thoughts of leaving the country.

Henry VII. died in April, 1509, when More’s age was a little
over thirty. In the first years of the reign of Henry VIII. he
rose to large practice in the law courts, where it is said he refused
to plead in cases which he thought unjust, and took no fees from widows,
orphans, or the poor. He would have preferred marrying the second
daughter of John Colt, of New Hall, in Essex, but chose her elder sister,
that he might not subject her to the discredit of being passed over.

In 1513 Thomas More, still Under-Sheriff of London, is said to have
written his “History of the Life and Death of King Edward V.,
and of the Usurpation of Richard III.” The book, which seems
to contain the knowledge and opinions of More’s patron, Morton,
was not printed until 1557, when its writer had been twenty-two years
dead. It was then printed from a MS. in More’s handwriting.

In the year 1515 Wolsey, Archbishop of York, was made Cardinal by
Leo X.; Henry VIII. made him Lord Chancellor, and from that year until
1523 the King and the Cardinal ruled England with absolute authority,
and called no parliament. In May of the year 1515 Thomas More—not
knighted yet—was joined in a commission to the Low Countries with
Cuthbert Tunstal and others to confer with the ambassadors of Charles
V., then only Archduke of Austria, upon a renewal of alliance.
On that embassy More, aged about thirty-seven, was absent from England
for six months, and while at Antwerp he established friendship with
Peter Giles (Latinised Ægidius), a scholarly and courteous young
man, who was secretary to the municipality of Antwerp.

Cuthbert Tunstal was a rising churchman, chancellor to the Archbishop
of Canterbury, who in that year (1515) was made Archdeacon of Chester,
and in May of the next year (1516) Master of the Rolls. In 1516
he was sent again to the Low Countries, and More then went with him
to Brussels, where they were in close companionship with Erasmus.

More’s “Utopia” was written in Latin, and is in
two parts, of which the second, describing the place ([Greek text]—or
Nusquama, as he called it sometimes in his letters—“Nowhere”),
was probably written towards the close of 1515; the first part, introductory,
early in 1516. The book was first printed at Louvain, late in
1516, under the editorship of Erasmus, Peter Giles, and other of More’s
friends in Flanders. It was then revised by More, and printed
by Frobenius at Basle in November, 1518. It was reprinted at Paris
and Vienna, but was not printed in England during More’s lifetime.
Its first publication in this country was in the English translation,
made in Edward’s VI.’s reign (1551) by Ralph Robinson.
It was translated with more literary skill by Gilbert Burnet, in 1684,
soon after he had conducted the defence of his friend Lord William Russell,
attended his execution, vindicated his memory, and been spitefully deprived
by James II. of his lectureship at St. Clement’s. Burnet
was drawn to the translation of “Utopia” by the same sense
of unreason in high places that caused More to write the book.
Burnet’s is the translation given in this volume.

The name of the book has given an adjective to our language—we
call an impracticable scheme Utopian. Yet, under the veil of a
playful fiction, the talk is intensely earnest, and abounds in practical
suggestion. It is the work of a scholarly and witty Englishman,
who attacks in his own way the chief political and social evils of his
time. Beginning with fact, More tells how he was sent into Flanders
with Cuthbert Tunstal, “whom the king’s majesty of late,
to the great rejoicing of all men, did prefer to the office of Master
of the Rolls;” how the commissioners of Charles met them at Bruges,
and presently returned to Brussels for instructions; and how More then
went to Antwerp, where he found a pleasure in the society of Peter Giles
which soothed his desire to see again his wife and children, from whom
he had been four months away. Then fact slides into fiction with
the finding of Raphael Hythloday (whose name, made of two Greek words
[Greek text] and [Greek text], means “knowing in trifles”),
a man who had been with Amerigo Vespucci in the three last of the voyages
to the new world lately discovered, of which the account had been first
printed in 1507, only nine years before Utopia was written.

Designedly fantastic in suggestion of details, “Utopia”
is the work of a scholar who had read Plato’s “Republic,”
and had his fancy quickened after reading Plutarch’s account of
Spartan life under Lycurgus. Beneath the veil of an ideal communism,
into which there has been worked some witty extravagance, there lies
a noble English argument. Sometimes More puts the case as of France
when he means England. Sometimes there is ironical praise of the
good faith of Christian kings, saving the book from censure as a political
attack on the policy of Henry VIII. Erasmus wrote to a friend
in 1517 that he should send for More’s “Utopia,” if
he had not read it, and “wished to see the true source of all
political evils.” And to More Erasmus wrote of his book,
“A burgomaster of Antwerp is so pleased with it that he knows
it all by heart.”

H. M.

DISCOURSES OF RAPHAEL HYTHLODAY, OF THE BEST STATE OF A COMMONWEALTH

Henry VIII., the unconquered King of England, a prince adorned with
all the virtues that become a great monarch, having some differences
of no small consequence with Charles the most serene Prince of Castile,
sent me into Flanders, as his ambassador, for treating and composing
matters between them. I was colleague and companion to that incomparable
man Cuthbert Tonstal, whom the King, with such universal applause, lately
made Master of the Rolls; but of whom I will say nothing; not because
I fear that the testimony of a friend will be suspected, but rather
because his learning and virtues are too great for me to do them justice,
and so well known, that they need not my commendations, unless I would,
according to the proverb, “Show the sun with a lantern.”
Those that were appointed by the Prince to treat with us, met us at
Bruges, according to agreement; they were all worthy men. The
Margrave of Bruges was their head, and the chief man among them; but
he that was esteemed the wisest, and that spoke for the rest, was George
Temse, the Provost of Casselsee: both art and nature had concurred to
make him eloquent: he was very learned in the law; and, as he had a
great capacity, so, by a long practice in affairs, he was very dexterous
at unravelling them. After we had several times met, without coming
to an agreement, they went to Brussels for some days, to know the Prince’s
pleasure; and, since our business would admit it, I went to Antwerp.
While I was there, among many that visited me, there was one that was
more acceptable to me than any other, Peter Giles, born at Antwerp,
who is a man of great honour, and of a good rank in his town, though
less than he deserves; for I do not know if there be anywhere to be
found a more learned and a better bred young man; for as he is both
a very worthy and a very knowing person, so he is so civil to all men,
so particularly kind to his friends, and so full of candour and affection,
that there is not, perhaps, above one or two anywhere to be found, that
is in all respects so perfect a friend: he is extraordinarily modest,
there is no artifice in him, and yet no man has more of a prudent simplicity.
His conversation was so pleasant and so innocently cheerful, that his
company in a great measure lessened any longings to go back to my country,
and to my wife and children, which an absence of four months had quickened
very much. One day, as I was returning home from mass at St. Mary’s,
which is the chief church, and the most frequented of any in Antwerp,
I saw him, by accident, talking with a stranger, who seemed past the
flower of his age; his face was tanned, he had a long beard, and his
cloak was hanging carelessly about him, so that, by his looks and habit,
I concluded he was a seaman. As soon as Peter saw me, he came
and saluted me, and as I was returning his civility, he took me aside,
and pointing to him with whom he had been discoursing, he said, “Do
you see that man? I was just thinking to bring him to you.”
I answered, “He should have been very welcome on your account.”
“And on his own too,” replied he, “if you knew the
man, for there is none alive that can give so copious an account of
unknown nations and countries as he can do, which I know you very much
desire.” “Then,” said I, “I did not guess
amiss, for at first sight I took him for a seaman.” “But
you are much mistaken,” said he, “for he has not sailed
as a seaman, but as a traveller, or rather a philosopher. This
Raphael, who from his family carries the name of Hythloday, is not ignorant
of the Latin tongue, but is eminently learned in the Greek, having applied
himself more particularly to that than to the former, because he had
given himself much to philosophy, in which he knew that the Romans have
left us nothing that is valuable, except what is to be found in Seneca
and Cicero. He is a Portuguese by birth, and was so desirous of
seeing the world, that he divided his estate among his brothers, ran
the same hazard as Americus Vesputius, and bore a share in three of
his four voyages that are now published; only he did not return with
him in his last, but obtained leave of him, almost by force, that he
might be one of those twenty-four who were left at the farthest place
at which they touched in their last voyage to New Castile. The
leaving him thus did not a little gratify one that was more fond of
travelling than of returning home to be buried in his own country; for
he used often to say, that the way to heaven was the same from all places,
and he that had no grave had the heavens still over him. Yet this
disposition of mind had cost him dear, if God had not been very gracious
to him; for after he, with five Castalians, had travelled over many
countries, at last, by strange good fortune, he got to Ceylon, and from
thence to Calicut, where he, very happily, found some Portuguese ships;
and, beyond all men’s expectations, returned to his native country.”
When Peter had said this to me, I thanked him for his kindness in intending
to give me the acquaintance of a man whose conversation he knew would
be so acceptable; and upon that Raphael and I embraced each other.
After those civilities were past which are usual with strangers upon
their first meeting, we all went to my house, and entering into the
garden, sat down on a green bank and entertained one another in discourse.
He told us that when Vesputius had sailed away, he, and his companions
that stayed behind in New Castile, by degrees insinuated themselves
into the affections of the people of the country, meeting often with
them and treating them gently; and at last they not only lived among
them without danger, but conversed familiarly with them, and got so
far into the heart of a prince, whose name and country I have forgot,
that he both furnished them plentifully with all things necessary, and
also with the conveniences of travelling, both boats when they went
by water, and waggons when they trained over land: he sent with them
a very faithful guide, who was to introduce and recommend them to such
other princes as they had a mind to see: and after many days’
journey, they came to towns, and cities, and to commonwealths, that
were both happily governed and well peopled. Under the equator,
and as far on both sides of it as the sun moves, there lay vast deserts
that were parched with the perpetual heat of the sun; the soil was withered,
all things looked dismally, and all places were either quite uninhabited,
or abounded with wild beasts and serpents, and some few men, that were
neither less wild nor less cruel than the beasts themselves. But,
as they went farther, a new scene opened, all things grew milder, the
air less burning, the soil more verdant, and even the beasts were less
wild: and, at last, there were nations, towns, and cities, that had
not only mutual commerce among themselves and with their neighbours,
but traded, both by sea and land, to very remote countries. There
they found the conveniencies of seeing many countries on all hands,
for no ship went any voyage into which he and his companions were not
very welcome. The first vessels that they saw were flat-bottomed,
their sails were made of reeds and wicker, woven close together, only
some were of leather; but, afterwards, they found ships made with round
keels and canvas sails, and in all respects like our ships, and the
seamen understood both astronomy and navigation. He got wonderfully
into their favour by showing them the use of the needle, of which till
then they were utterly ignorant. They sailed before with great
caution, and only in summer time; but now they count all seasons alike,
trusting wholly to the loadstone, in which they are, perhaps, more secure
than safe; so that there is reason to fear that this discovery, which
was thought would prove so much to their advantage, may, by their imprudence,
become an occasion of much mischief to them. But it were too long
to dwell on all that he told us he had observed in every place, it would
be too great a digression from our present purpose: whatever is necessary
to be told concerning those wise and prudent institutions which he observed
among civilised nations, may perhaps be related by us on a more proper
occasion. We asked him many questions concerning all these things,
to which he answered very willingly; we made no inquiries after monsters,
than which nothing is more common; for everywhere one may hear of ravenous
dogs and wolves, and cruel men-eaters, but it is not so easy to find
states that are well and wisely governed.

As he told us of many things that were amiss in those new-discovered
countries, so he reckoned up not a few things, from which patterns might
be taken for correcting the errors of these nations among whom we live;
of which an account may be given, as I have already promised, at some
other time; for, at present, I intend only to relate those particulars
that he told us, of the manners and laws of the Utopians: but I will
begin with the occasion that led us to speak of that commonwealth.
After Raphael had discoursed with great judgment on the many errors
that were both among us and these nations, had treated of the wise institutions
both here and there, and had spoken as distinctly of the customs and
government of every nation through which he had past, as if he had spent
his whole life in it, Peter, being struck with admiration, said, “I
wonder, Raphael, how it comes that you enter into no king’s service,
for I am sure there are none to whom you would not be very acceptable;
for your learning and knowledge, both of men and things, is such, that
you would not only entertain them very pleasantly, but be of great use
to them, by the examples you could set before them, and the advices
you could give them; and by this means you would both serve your own
interest, and be of great use to all your friends.” “As
for my friends,” answered he, “I need not be much concerned,
having already done for them all that was incumbent on me; for when
I was not only in good health, but fresh and young, I distributed that
among my kindred and friends which other people do not part with till
they are old and sick: when they then unwillingly give that which they
can enjoy no longer themselves. I think my friends ought to rest
contented with this, and not to expect that for their sakes I should
enslave myself to any king whatsoever.” “Soft and
fair!” said Peter; “I do not mean that you should be a slave
to any king, but only that you should assist them and be useful to them.”
“The change of the word,” said he, “does not alter
the matter.” “But term it as you will,” replied
Peter, “I do not see any other way in which you can be so useful,
both in private to your friends and to the public, and by which you
can make your own condition happier.” “Happier?”
answered Raphael, “is that to be compassed in a way so abhorrent
to my genius? Now I live as I will, to which I believe, few courtiers
can pretend; and there are so many that court the favour of great men,
that there will be no great loss if they are not troubled either with
me or with others of my temper.” Upon this, said I, “I
perceive, Raphael, that you neither desire wealth nor greatness; and,
indeed, I value and admire such a man much more than I do any of the
great men in the world. Yet I think you would do what would well
become so generous and philosophical a soul as yours is, if you would
apply your time and thoughts to public affairs, even though you may
happen to find it a little uneasy to yourself; and this you can never
do with so much advantage as by being taken into the council of some
great prince and putting him on noble and worthy actions, which I know
you would do if you were in such a post; for the springs both of good
and evil flow from the prince over a whole nation, as from a lasting
fountain. So much learning as you have, even without practice
in affairs, or so great a practice as you have had, without any other
learning, would render you a very fit counsellor to any king whatsoever.”
“You are doubly mistaken,” said he, “Mr. More, both
in your opinion of me and in the judgment you make of things: for as
I have not that capacity that you fancy I have, so if I had it, the
public would not be one jot the better when I had sacrificed my quiet
to it. For most princes apply themselves more to affairs of war
than to the useful arts of peace; and in these I neither have any knowledge,
nor do I much desire it; they are generally more set on acquiring new
kingdoms, right or wrong, than on governing well those they possess:
and, among the ministers of princes, there are none that are not so
wise as to need no assistance, or at least, that do not think themselves
so wise that they imagine they need none; and if they court any, it
is only those for whom the prince has much personal favour, whom by
their fawning and flatteries they endeavour to fix to their own interests;
and, indeed, nature has so made us, that we all love to be flattered
and to please ourselves with our own notions: the old crow loves his
young, and the ape her cubs. Now if in such a court, made up of
persons who envy all others and only admire themselves, a person should
but propose anything that he had either read in history or observed
in his travels, the rest would think that the reputation of their wisdom
would sink, and that their interests would be much depressed if they
could not run it down: and, if all other things failed, then they would
fly to this, that such or such things pleased our ancestors, and it
were well for us if we could but match them. They would set up
their rest on such an answer, as a sufficient confutation of all that
could be said, as if it were a great misfortune that any should be found
wiser than his ancestors. But though they willingly let go all
the good things that were among those of former ages, yet, if better
things are proposed, they cover themselves obstinately with this excuse
of reverence to past times. I have met with these proud, morose,
and absurd judgments of things in many places, particularly once in
England.” “Were you ever there?” said I.
“Yes, I was,” answered he, “and stayed some months
there, not long after the rebellion in the West was suppressed, with
a great slaughter of the poor people that were engaged in it.

“I was then much obliged to that reverend prelate, John Morton,
Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal, and Chancellor of England; a man,”
said he, “Peter (for Mr. More knows well what he was), that was
not less venerable for his wisdom and virtues than for the high character
he bore: he was of a middle stature, not broken with age; his looks
begot reverence rather than fear; his conversation was easy, but serious
and grave; he sometimes took pleasure to try the force of those that
came as suitors to him upon business by speaking sharply, though decently,
to them, and by that he discovered their spirit and presence of mind;
with which he was much delighted when it did not grow up to impudence,
as bearing a great resemblance to his own temper, and he looked on such
persons as the fittest men for affairs. He spoke both gracefully
and weightily; he was eminently skilled in the law, had a vast understanding,
and a prodigious memory; and those excellent talents with which nature
had furnished him were improved by study and experience. When
I was in England the King depended much on his counsels, and the Government
seemed to be chiefly supported by him; for from his youth he had been
all along practised in affairs; and, having passed through many traverses
of fortune, he had, with great cost, acquired a vast stock of wisdom,
which is not soon lost when it is purchased so dear. One day,
when I was dining with him, there happened to be at table one of the
English lawyers, who took occasion to run out in a high commendation
of the severe execution of justice upon thieves, ‘who,’
as he said, ‘were then hanged so fast that there were sometimes
twenty on one gibbet!’ and, upon that, he said, ‘he could
not wonder enough how it came to pass that, since so few escaped, there
were yet so many thieves left, who were still robbing in all places.’
Upon this, I (who took the boldness to speak freely before the Cardinal)
said, ‘There was no reason to wonder at the matter, since this
way of punishing thieves was neither just in itself nor good for the
public; for, as the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual;
simple theft not being so great a crime that it ought to cost a man
his life; no punishment, how severe soever, being able to restrain those
from robbing who can find out no other way of livelihood. In this,’
said I, ‘not only you in England, but a great part of the world,
imitate some ill masters, that are readier to chastise their scholars
than to teach them. There are dreadful punishments enacted against
thieves, but it were much better to make such good provisions by which
every man might be put in a method how to live, and so be preserved
from the fatal necessity of stealing and of dying for it.’
‘There has been care enough taken for that,’ said he; ‘there
are many handicrafts, and there is husbandry, by which they may make
a shift to live, unless they have a greater mind to follow ill courses.’
‘That will not serve your turn,’ said I, ‘for many
lose their limbs in civil or foreign wars, as lately in the Cornish
rebellion, and some time ago in your wars with France, who, being thus
mutilated in the service of their king and country, can no more follow
their old trades, and are too old to learn new ones; but since wars
are only accidental things, and have intervals, let us consider those
things that fall out every day. There is a great number of noblemen
among you that are themselves as idle as drones, that subsist on other
men’s labour, on the labour of their tenants, whom, to raise their
revenues, they pare to the quick. This, indeed, is the only instance
of their frugality, for in all other things they are prodigal, even
to the beggaring of themselves; but, besides this, they carry about
with them a great number of idle fellows, who never learned any art
by which they may gain their living; and these, as soon as either their
lord dies, or they themselves fall sick, are turned out of doors; for
your lords are readier to feed idle people than to take care of the
sick; and often the heir is not able to keep together so great a family
as his predecessor did. Now, when the stomachs of those that are
thus turned out of doors grow keen, they rob no less keenly; and what
else can they do? For when, by wandering about, they have worn
out both their health and their clothes, and are tattered, and look
ghastly, men of quality will not entertain them, and poor men dare not
do it, knowing that one who has been bred up in idleness and pleasure,
and who was used to walk about with his sword and buckler, despising
all the neighbourhood with an insolent scorn as far below him, is not
fit for the spade and mattock; nor will he serve a poor man for so small
a hire and in so low a diet as he can afford to give him.’
To this he answered, ‘This sort of men ought to be particularly
cherished, for in them consists the force of the armies for which we
have occasion; since their birth inspires them with a nobler sense of
honour than is to be found among tradesmen or ploughmen.’
‘You may as well say,’ replied I, ‘that you must cherish
thieves on the account of wars, for you will never want the one as long
as you have the other; and as robbers prove sometimes gallant soldiers,
so soldiers often prove brave robbers, so near an alliance there is
between those two sorts of life. But this bad custom, so common
among you, of keeping many servants, is not peculiar to this nation.
In France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people, for the whole
country is full of soldiers, still kept up in time of peace (if such
a state of a nation can be called a peace); and these are kept in pay
upon the same account that you plead for those idle retainers about
noblemen: this being a maxim of those pretended statesmen, that it is
necessary for the public safety to have a good body of veteran soldiers
ever in readiness. They think raw men are not to be depended on,
and they sometimes seek occasions for making war, that they may train
up their soldiers in the art of cutting throats, or, as Sallust observed,
“for keeping their hands in use, that they may not grow dull by
too long an intermission.” But France has learned to its
cost how dangerous it is to feed such beasts. The fate of the
Romans, Carthaginians, and Syrians, and many other nations and cities,
which were both overturned and quite ruined by those standing armies,
should make others wiser; and the folly of this maxim of the French
appears plainly even from this, that their trained soldiers often find
your raw men prove too hard for them, of which I will not say much,
lest you may think I flatter the English. Every day’s experience
shows that the mechanics in the towns or the clowns in the country are
not afraid of fighting with those idle gentlemen, if they are not disabled
by some misfortune in their body or dispirited by extreme want; so that
you need not fear that those well-shaped and strong men (for it is only
such that noblemen love to keep about them till they spoil them), who
now grow feeble with ease and are softened with their effeminate manner
of life, would be less fit for action if they were well bred and well
employed. And it seems very unreasonable that, for the prospect
of a war, which you need never have but when you please, you should
maintain so many idle men, as will always disturb you in time of peace,
which is ever to be more considered than war. But I do not think
that this necessity of stealing arises only from hence; there is another
cause of it, more peculiar to England.’ ‘What is that?’
said the Cardinal: ‘The increase of pasture,’ said I, ‘by
which your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order,
may be said now to devour men and unpeople, not only villages, but towns;
for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and
richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those
holy men, the dobots! not contented with the old rents which their farms
yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do
no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good.
They stop the course of agriculture, destroying houses and towns, reserving
only the churches, and enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep
in them. As if forests and parks had swallowed up too little of
the land, those worthy countrymen turn the best inhabited places into
solitudes; for when an insatiable wretch, who is a plague to his country,
resolves to enclose many thousand acres of ground, the owners, as well
as tenants, are turned out of their possessions by trick or by main
force, or, being wearied out by ill usage, they are forced to sell them;
by which means those miserable people, both men and women, married and
unmarried, old and young, with their poor but numerous families (since
country business requires many hands), are all forced to change their
seats, not knowing whither to go; and they must sell, almost for nothing,
their household stuff, which could not bring them much money, even though
they might stay for a buyer. When that little money is at an end
(for it will be soon spent), what is left for them to do but either
to steal, and so to be hanged (God knows how justly!), or to go about
and beg? and if they do this they are put in prison as idle vagabonds,
while they would willingly work but can find none that will hire them;
for there is no more occasion for country labour, to which they have
been bred, when there is no arable ground left. One shepherd can
look after a flock, which will stock an extent of ground that would
require many hands if it were to be ploughed and reaped. This,
likewise, in many places raises the price of corn. The price of
wool is also so risen that the poor people, who were wont to make cloth,
are no more able to buy it; and this, likewise, makes many of them idle:
for since the increase of pasture God has punished the avarice of the
owners by a rot among the sheep, which has destroyed vast numbers of
them—to us it might have seemed more just had it fell on the owners
themselves. But, suppose the sheep should increase ever so much,
their price is not likely to fall; since, though they cannot be called
a monopoly, because they are not engrossed by one person, yet they are
in so few hands, and these are so rich, that, as they are not pressed
to sell them sooner than they have a mind to it, so they never do it
till they have raised the price as high as possible. And on the
same account it is that the other kinds of cattle are so dear, because
many villages being pulled down, and all country labour being much neglected,
there are none who make it their business to breed them. The rich
do not breed cattle as they do sheep, but buy them lean and at low prices;
and, after they have fattened them on their grounds, sell them again
at high rates. And I do not think that all the inconveniences
this will produce are yet observed; for, as they sell the cattle dear,
so, if they are consumed faster than the breeding countries from which
they are brought can afford them, then the stock must decrease, and
this must needs end in great scarcity; and by these means, this your
island, which seemed as to this particular the happiest in the world,
will suffer much by the cursed avarice of a few persons: besides this,
the rising of corn makes all people lessen their families as much as
they can; and what can those who are dismissed by them do but either
beg or rob? And to this last a man of a great mind is much sooner
drawn than to the former. Luxury likewise breaks in apace upon
you to set forward your poverty and misery; there is an excessive vanity
in apparel, and great cost in diet, and that not only in noblemen’s
families, but even among tradesmen, among the farmers themselves, and
among all ranks of persons. You have also many infamous houses,
and, besides those that are known, the taverns and ale-houses are no
better; add to these dice, cards, tables, football, tennis, and quoits,
in which money runs fast away; and those that are initiated into them
must, in the conclusion, betake themselves to robbing for a supply.
Banish these plagues, and give orders that those who have dispeopled
so much soil may either rebuild the villages they have pulled down or
let out their grounds to such as will do it; restrain those engrossings
of the rich, that are as bad almost as monopolies; leave fewer occasions
to idleness; let agriculture be set up again, and the manufacture of
the wool be regulated, that so there may be work found for those companies
of idle people whom want forces to be thieves, or who now, being idle
vagabonds or useless servants, will certainly grow thieves at last.
If you do not find a remedy to these evils it is a vain thing to boast
of your severity in punishing theft, which, though it may have the appearance
of justice, yet in itself is neither just nor convenient; for if you
suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted
from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their
first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this
but that you first make thieves and then punish them?’

“While I was talking thus, the Counsellor, who was present,
had prepared an answer, and had resolved to resume all I had said, according
to the formality of a debate, in which things are generally repeated
more faithfully than they are answered, as if the chief trial to be
made were of men’s memories. ‘You have talked prettily,
for a stranger,’ said he, ‘having heard of many things among
us which you have not been able to consider well; but I will make the
whole matter plain to you, and will first repeat in order all that you
have said; then I will show how much your ignorance of our affairs has
misled you; and will, in the last place, answer all your arguments.
And, that I may begin where I promised, there were four things—’
‘Hold your peace!’ said the Cardinal; ‘this will take
up too much time; therefore we will, at present, ease you of the trouble
of answering, and reserve it to our next meeting, which shall be to-morrow,
if Raphael’s affairs and yours can admit of it. But, Raphael,’
said he to me, ‘I would gladly know upon what reason it is that
you think theft ought not to be punished by death: would you give way
to it? or do you propose any other punishment that will be more useful
to the public? for, since death does not restrain theft, if men thought
their lives would be safe, what fear or force could restrain ill men?
On the contrary, they would look on the mitigation of the punishment
as an invitation to commit more crimes.’ I answered, ‘It
seems to me a very unjust thing to take away a man’s life for
a little money, for nothing in the world can be of equal value with
a man’s life: and if it be said, “that it is not for the
money that one suffers, but for his breaking the law,” I must
say, extreme justice is an extreme injury: for we ought not to approve
of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor
of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; as if there
were no difference to be made between the killing a man and the taking
his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is
no likeness nor proportion. God has commanded us not to kill,
and shall we kill so easily for a little money? But if one shall
say, that by that law we are only forbid to kill any except when the
laws of the land allow of it, upon the same grounds, laws may be made,
in some cases, to allow of adultery and perjury: for God having taken
from us the right of disposing either of our own or of other people’s
lives, if it is pretended that the mutual consent of men in making laws
can authorise man-slaughter in cases in which God has given us no example,
that it frees people from the obligation of the divine law, and so makes
murder a lawful action, what is this, but to give a preference to human
laws before the divine? and, if this is once admitted, by the same rule
men may, in all other things, put what restrictions they please upon
the laws of God. If, by the Mosaical law, though it was rough
and severe, as being a yoke laid on an obstinate and servile nation,
men were only fined, and not put to death for theft, we cannot imagine,
that in this new law of mercy, in which God treats us with the tenderness
of a father, He has given us a greater licence to cruelty than He did
to the Jews. Upon these reasons it is, that I think putting thieves
to death is not lawful; and it is plain and obvious that it is absurd
and of ill consequence to the commonwealth that a thief and a murderer
should be equally punished; for if a robber sees that his danger is
the same if he is convicted of theft as if he were guilty of murder,
this will naturally incite him to kill the person whom otherwise he
would only have robbed; since, if the punishment is the same, there
is more security, and less danger of discovery, when he that can best
make it is put out of the way; so that terrifying thieves too much provokes
them to cruelty.

“But as to the question, ‘What more convenient way of
punishment can be found?’ I think it much easier to find out that
than to invent anything that is worse; why should we doubt but the way
that was so long in use among the old Romans, who understood so well
the arts of government, was very proper for their punishment?
They condemned such as they found guilty of great crimes to work their
whole lives in quarries, or to dig in mines with chains about them.
But the method that I liked best was that which I observed in my travels
in Persia, among the Polylerits, who are a considerable and well-governed
people: they pay a yearly tribute to the King of Persia, but in all
other respects they are a free nation, and governed by their own laws:
they lie far from the sea, and are environed with hills; and, being
contented with the productions of their own country, which is very fruitful,
they have little commerce with any other nation; and as they, according
to the genius of their country, have no inclination to enlarge their
borders, so their mountains and the pension they pay to the Persian,
secure them from all invasions. Thus they have no wars among them;
they live rather conveniently than with splendour, and may be rather
called a happy nation than either eminent or famous; for I do not think
that they are known, so much as by name, to any but their next neighbours.
Those that are found guilty of theft among them are bound to make restitution
to the owner, and not, as it is in other places, to the prince, for
they reckon that the prince has no more right to the stolen goods than
the thief; but if that which was stolen is no more in being, then the
goods of the thieves are estimated, and restitution being made out of
them, the remainder is given to their wives and children; and they themselves
are condemned to serve in the public works, but are neither imprisoned
nor chained, unless there happens to be some extraordinary circumstance
in their crimes. They go about loose and free, working for the
public: if they are idle or backward to work they are whipped, but if
they work hard they are well used and treated without any mark of reproach;
only the lists of them are called always at night, and then they are
shut up. They suffer no other uneasiness but this of constant
labour; for, as they work for the public, so they are well entertained
out of the public stock, which is done differently in different places:
in some places whatever is bestowed on them is raised by a charitable
contribution; and, though this way may seem uncertain, yet so merciful
are the inclinations of that people, that they are plentifully supplied
by it; but in other places public revenues are set aside for them, or
there is a constant tax or poll-money raised for their maintenance.
In some places they are set to no public work, but every private man
that has occasion to hire workmen goes to the market-places and hires
them of the public, a little lower than he would do a freeman.
If they go lazily about their task he may quicken them with the whip.
By this means there is always some piece of work or other to be done
by them; and, besides their livelihood, they earn somewhat still to
the public. They all wear a peculiar habit, of one certain colour,
and their hair is cropped a little above their ears, and a piece of
one of their ears is cut off. Their friends are allowed to give
them either meat, drink, or clothes, so they are of their proper colour;
but it is death, both to the giver and taker, if they give them money;
nor is it less penal for any freeman to take money from them upon any
account whatsoever: and it is also death for any of these slaves (so
they are called) to handle arms. Those of every division of the
country are distinguished by a peculiar mark, which it is capital for
them to lay aside, to go out of their bounds, or to talk with a slave
of another jurisdiction, and the very attempt of an escape is no less
penal than an escape itself. It is death for any other slave to
be accessory to it; and if a freeman engages in it he is condemned to
slavery. Those that discover it are rewarded—if freemen,
in money; and if slaves, with liberty, together with a pardon for being
accessory to it; that so they might find their account rather in repenting
of their engaging in such a design than in persisting in it.

“These are their laws and rules in relation to robbery, and
it is obvious that they are as advantageous as they are mild and gentle;
since vice is not only destroyed and men preserved, but they are treated
in such a manner as to make them see the necessity of being honest and
of employing the rest of their lives in repairing the injuries they
had formerly done to society. Nor is there any hazard of their
falling back to their old customs; and so little do travellers apprehend
mischief from them that they generally make use of them for guides from
one jurisdiction to another; for there is nothing left them by which
they can rob or be the better for it, since, as they are disarmed, so
the very having of money is a sufficient conviction: and as they are
certainly punished if discovered, so they cannot hope to escape; for
their habit being in all the parts of it different from what is commonly
worn, they cannot fly away, unless they would go naked, and even then
their cropped ear would betray them. The only danger to be feared
from them is their conspiring against the government; but those of one
division and neighbourhood can do nothing to any purpose unless a general
conspiracy were laid amongst all the slaves of the several jurisdictions,
which cannot be done, since they cannot meet or talk together; nor will
any venture on a design where the concealment would be so dangerous
and the discovery so profitable. None are quite hopeless of recovering
their freedom, since by their obedience and patience, and by giving
good grounds to believe that they will change their manner of life for
the future, they may expect at last to obtain their liberty, and some
are every year restored to it upon the good character that is given
of them. When I had related all this, I added that I did not see
why such a method might not be followed with more advantage than could
ever be expected from that severe justice which the Counsellor magnified
so much. To this he answered, ‘That it could never take
place in England without endangering the whole nation.’
As he said this he shook his head, made some grimaces, and held his
peace, while all the company seemed of his opinion, except the Cardinal,
who said, ‘That it was not easy to form a judgment of its success,
since it was a method that never yet had been tried; but if,’
said he, ‘when sentence of death were passed upon a thief, the
prince would reprieve him for a while, and make the experiment upon
him, denying him the privilege of a sanctuary; and then, if it had a
good effect upon him, it might take place; and, if it did not succeed,
the worst would be to execute the sentence on the condemned persons
at last; and I do not see,’ added he, ‘why it would be either
unjust, inconvenient, or at all dangerous to admit of such a delay;
in my opinion the vagabonds ought to be treated in the same manner,
against whom, though we have made many laws, yet we have not been able
to gain our end.’ When the Cardinal had done, they all commended
the motion, though they had despised it when it came from me, but more
particularly commended what related to the vagabonds, because it was
his own observation.

“I do not know whether it be worth while to tell what followed,
for it was very ridiculous; but I shall venture at it, for as it is
not foreign to this matter, so some good use may be made of it.
There was a Jester standing by, that counterfeited the fool so naturally
that he seemed to be really one; the jests which he offered were so
cold and dull that we laughed more at him than at them, yet sometimes
he said, as it were by chance, things that were not unpleasant, so as
to justify the old proverb, ‘That he who throws the dice often,
will sometimes have a lucky hit.’ When one of the company
had said that I had taken care of the thieves, and the Cardinal had
taken care of the vagabonds, so that there remained nothing but that
some public provision might be made for the poor whom sickness or old
age had disabled from labour, ‘Leave that to me,’ said the
Fool, ‘and I shall take care of them, for there is no sort of
people whose sight I abhor more, having been so often vexed with them
and with their sad complaints; but as dolefully soever as they have
told their tale, they could never prevail so far as to draw one penny
from me; for either I had no mind to give them anything, or, when I
had a mind to do it, I had nothing to give them; and they now know me
so well that they will not lose their labour, but let me pass without
giving me any trouble, because they hope for nothing—no more,
in faith, than if I were a priest; but I would have a law made for sending
all these beggars to monasteries, the men to the Benedictines, to be
made lay-brothers, and the women to be nuns.’ The Cardinal
smiled, and approved of it in jest, but the rest liked it in earnest.
There was a divine present, who, though he was a grave morose man, yet
he was so pleased with this reflection that was made on the priests
and the monks that he began to play with the Fool, and said to him,
‘This will not deliver you from all beggars, except you take care
of us Friars.’ ‘That is done already,’ answered
the Fool, ‘for the Cardinal has provided for you by what he proposed
for restraining vagabonds and setting them to work, for I know no vagabonds
like you.’ This was well entertained by the whole company,
who, looking at the Cardinal, perceived that he was not ill-pleased
at it; only the Friar himself was vexed, as may be easily imagined,
and fell into such a passion that he could not forbear railing at the
Fool, and calling him knave, slanderer, backbiter, and son of perdition,
and then cited some dreadful threatenings out of the Scriptures against
him. Now the Jester thought he was in his element, and laid about
him freely. ‘Good Friar,’ said he, ‘be not angry,
for it is written, “In patience possess your soul.”’
The Friar answered (for I shall give you his own words), ‘I am
not angry, you hangman; at least, I do not sin in it, for the Psalmist
says, “Be ye angry and sin not.”’ Upon this
the Cardinal admonished him gently, and wished him to govern his passions.
‘No, my lord,’ said he, ‘I speak not but from a good
zeal, which I ought to have, for holy men have had a good zeal, as it
is said, “The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up;” and we
sing in our church that those who mocked Elisha as he went up to the
house of God felt the effects of his zeal, which that mocker, that rogue,
that scoundrel, will perhaps feel.’ ‘You do this,
perhaps, with a good intention,’ said the Cardinal, ‘but,
in my opinion, it were wiser in you, and perhaps better for you, not
to engage in so ridiculous a contest with a Fool.’ ‘No,
my lord,’ answered he, ‘that were not wisely done, for Solomon,
the wisest of men, said, “Answer a Fool according to his folly,”
which I now do, and show him the ditch into which he will fall, if he
is not aware of it; for if the many mockers of Elisha, who was but one
bald man, felt the effect of his zeal, what will become of the mocker
of so many Friars, among whom there are so many bald men? We have,
likewise, a bull, by which all that jeer us are excommunicated.’
When the Cardinal saw that there was no end of this matter he made a
sign to the Fool to withdraw, turned the discourse another way, and
soon after rose from the table, and, dismissing us, went to hear causes.

“Thus, Mr. More, I have run out into a tedious story, of the
length of which I had been ashamed, if (as you earnestly begged it of
me) I had not observed you to hearken to it as if you had no mind to
lose any part of it. I might have contracted it, but I resolved
to give it you at large, that you might observe how those that despised
what I had proposed, no sooner perceived that the Cardinal did not dislike
it but presently approved of it, fawned so on him and flattered him
to such a degree, that they in good earnest applauded those things that
he only liked in jest; and from hence you may gather how little courtiers
would value either me or my counsels.”

To this I answered, “You have done me a great kindness in this
relation; for as everything has been related by you both wisely and
pleasantly, so you have made me imagine that I was in my own country
and grown young again, by recalling that good Cardinal to my thoughts,
in whose family I was bred from my childhood; and though you are, upon
other accounts, very dear to me, yet you are the dearer because you
honour his memory so much; but, after all this, I cannot change my opinion,
for I still think that if you could overcome that aversion which you
have to the courts of princes, you might, by the advice which it is
in your power to give, do a great deal of good to mankind, and this
is the chief design that every good man ought to propose to himself
in living; for your friend Plato thinks that nations will be happy when
either philosophers become kings or kings become philosophers.
It is no wonder if we are so far from that happiness while philosophers
will not think it their duty to assist kings with their counsels.”
“They are not so base-minded,” said he, “but that
they would willingly do it; many of them have already done it by their
books, if those that are in power would but hearken to their good advice.
But Plato judged right, that except kings themselves became philosophers,
they who from their childhood are corrupted with false notions would
never fall in entirely with the counsels of philosophers, and this he
himself found to be true in the person of Dionysius.

“Do not you think that if I were about any king, proposing
good laws to him, and endeavouring to root out all the cursed seeds
of evil that I found in him, I should either be turned out of his court,
or, at least, be laughed at for my pains? For instance, what could
I signify if I were about the King of France, and were called into his
cabinet council, where several wise men, in his hearing, were proposing
many expedients; as, by what arts and practices Milan may be kept, and
Naples, that has so often slipped out of their hands, recovered; how
the Venetians, and after them the rest of Italy, may be subdued; and
then how Flanders, Brabant, and all Burgundy, and some other kingdoms
which he has swallowed already in his designs, may be added to his empire?
One proposes a league with the Venetians, to be kept as long as he finds
his account in it, and that he ought to communicate counsels with them,
and give them some share of the spoil till his success makes him need
or fear them less, and then it will be easily taken out of their hands;
another proposes the hiring the Germans and the securing the Switzers
by pensions; another proposes the gaining the Emperor by money, which
is omnipotent with him; another proposes a peace with the King of Arragon,
and, in order to cement it, the yielding up the King of Navarre’s
pretensions; another thinks that the Prince of Castile is to be wrought
on by the hope of an alliance, and that some of his courtiers are to
be gained to the French faction by pensions. The hardest point
of all is, what to do with England; a treaty of peace is to be set on
foot, and, if their alliance is not to be depended on, yet it is to
be made as firm as possible, and they are to be called friends, but
suspected as enemies: therefore the Scots are to be kept in readiness
to be let loose upon England on every occasion; and some banished nobleman
is to be supported underhand (for by the League it cannot be done avowedly)
who has a pretension to the crown, by which means that suspected prince
may be kept in awe. Now when things are in so great a fermentation,
and so many gallant men are joining counsels how to carry on the war,
if so mean a man as I should stand up and wish them to change all their
counsels—to let Italy alone and stay at home, since the kingdom
of France was indeed greater than could be well governed by one man;
that therefore he ought not to think of adding others to it; and if,
after this, I should propose to them the resolutions of the Achorians,
a people that lie on the south-east of Utopia, who long ago engaged
in war in order to add to the dominions of their prince another kingdom,
to which he had some pretensions by an ancient alliance: this they conquered,
but found that the trouble of keeping it was equal to that by which
it was gained; that the conquered people were always either in rebellion
or exposed to foreign invasions, while they were obliged to be incessantly
at war, either for or against them, and consequently could never disband
their army; that in the meantime they were oppressed with taxes, their
money went out of the kingdom, their blood was spilt for the glory of
their king without procuring the least advantage to the people, who
received not the smallest benefit from it even in time of peace; and
that, their manners being corrupted by a long war, robbery and murders
everywhere abounded, and their laws fell into contempt; while their
king, distracted with the care of two kingdoms, was the less able to
apply his mind to the interest of either. When they saw this,
and that there would be no end to these evils, they by joint counsels
made an humble address to their king, desiring him to choose which of
the two kingdoms he had the greatest mind to keep, since he could not
hold both; for they were too great a people to be governed by a divided
king, since no man would willingly have a groom that should be in common
between him and another. Upon which the good prince was forced
to quit his new kingdom to one of his friends (who was not long after
dethroned), and to be contented with his old one. To this I would
add that after all those warlike attempts, the vast confusions, and
the consumption both of treasure and of people that must follow them,
perhaps upon some misfortune they might be forced to throw up all at
last; therefore it seemed much more eligible that the king should improve
his ancient kingdom all he could, and make it flourish as much as possible;
that he should love his people, and be beloved of them; that he should
live among them, govern them gently and let other kingdoms alone, since
that which had fallen to his share was big enough, if not too big, for
him:—pray, how do you think would such a speech as this be heard?”

“I confess,” said I, “I think not very well.”

“But what,” said he, “if I should sort with another
kind of ministers, whose chief contrivances and consultations were by
what art the prince’s treasures might be increased? where one
proposes raising the value of specie when the king’s debts are
large, and lowering it when his revenues were to come in, that so he
might both pay much with a little, and in a little receive a great deal.
Another proposes a pretence of a war, that money might be raised in
order to carry it on, and that a peace be concluded as soon as that
was done; and this with such appearances of religion as might work on
the people, and make them impute it to the piety of their prince, and
to his tenderness for the lives of his subjects. A third offers
some old musty laws that have been antiquated by a long disuse (and
which, as they had been forgotten by all the subjects, so they had also
been broken by them), and proposes the levying the penalties of these
laws, that, as it would bring in a vast treasure, so there might be
a very good pretence for it, since it would look like the executing
a law and the doing of justice. A fourth proposes the prohibiting
of many things under severe penalties, especially such as were against
the interest of the people, and then the dispensing with these prohibitions,
upon great compositions, to those who might find their advantage in
breaking them. This would serve two ends, both of them acceptable
to many; for as those whose avarice led them to transgress would be
severely fined, so the selling licences dear would look as if a prince
were tender of his people, and would not easily, or at low rates, dispense
with anything that might be against the public good. Another proposes
that the judges must be made sure, that they may declare always in favour
of the prerogative; that they must be often sent for to court, that
the king may hear them argue those points in which he is concerned;
since, how unjust soever any of his pretensions may be, yet still some
one or other of them, either out of contradiction to others, or the
pride of singularity, or to make their court, would find out some pretence
or other to give the king a fair colour to carry the point. For
if the judges but differ in opinion, the clearest thing in the world
is made by that means disputable, and truth being once brought in question,
the king may then take advantage to expound the law for his own profit;
while the judges that stand out will be brought over, either through
fear or modesty; and they being thus gained, all of them may be sent
to the Bench to give sentence boldly as the king would have it; for
fair pretences will never be wanting when sentence is to be given in
the prince’s favour. It will either be said that equity
lies of his side, or some words in the law will be found sounding that
way, or some forced sense will be put on them; and, when all other things
fail, the king’s undoubted prerogative will be pretended, as that
which is above all law, and to which a religious judge ought to have
a special regard. Thus all consent to that maxim of Crassus, that
a prince cannot have treasure enough, since he must maintain his armies
out of it; that a king, even though he would, can do nothing unjustly;
that all property is in him, not excepting the very persons of his subjects;
and that no man has any other property but that which the king, out
of his goodness, thinks fit to leave him. And they think it is
the prince’s interest that there be as little of this left as
may be, as if it were his advantage that his people should have neither
riches nor liberty, since these things make them less easy and willing
to submit to a cruel and unjust government. Whereas necessity
and poverty blunts them, makes them patient, beats them down, and breaks
that height of spirit that might otherwise dispose them to rebel.
Now what if, after all these propositions were made, I should rise up
and assert that such counsels were both unbecoming a king and mischievous
to him; and that not only his honour, but his safety, consisted more
in his people’s wealth than in his own; if I should show that
they choose a king for their own sake, and not for his; that, by his
care and endeavours, they may be both easy and safe; and that, therefore,
a prince ought to take more care of his people’s happiness than
of his own, as a shepherd is to take more care of his flock than of
himself? It is also certain that they are much mistaken that think
the poverty of a nation is a mean of the public safety. Who quarrel
more than beggars? who does more earnestly long for a change than he
that is uneasy in his present circumstances? and who run to create confusions
with so desperate a boldness as those who, having nothing to lose, hope
to gain by them? If a king should fall under such contempt or
envy that he could not keep his subjects in their duty but by oppression
and ill usage, and by rendering them poor and miserable, it were certainly
better for him to quit his kingdom than to retain it by such methods
as make him, while he keeps the name of authority, lose the majesty
due to it. Nor is it so becoming the dignity of a king to reign
over beggars as over rich and happy subjects. And therefore Fabricius,
a man of a noble and exalted temper, said ‘he would rather govern
rich men than be rich himself; since for one man to abound in wealth
and pleasure when all about him are mourning and groaning, is to be
a gaoler and not a king.’ He is an unskilful physician that
cannot cure one disease without casting his patient into another.
So he that can find no other way for correcting the errors of his people
but by taking from them the conveniences of life, shows that he knows
not what it is to govern a free nation. He himself ought rather
to shake off his sloth, or to lay down his pride, for the contempt or
hatred that his people have for him takes its rise from the vices in
himself. Let him live upon what belongs to him without wronging
others, and accommodate his expense to his revenue. Let him punish
crimes, and, by his wise conduct, let him endeavour to prevent them,
rather than be severe when he has suffered them to be too common.
Let him not rashly revive laws that are abrogated by disuse, especially
if they have been long forgotten and never wanted. And let him
never take any penalty for the breach of them to which a judge would
not give way in a private man, but would look on him as a crafty and
unjust person for pretending to it. To these things I would add
that law among the Macarians—a people that live not far from Utopia—by
which their king, on the day on which he began to reign, is tied by
an oath, confirmed by solemn sacrifices, never to have at once above
a thousand pounds of gold in his treasures, or so much silver as is
equal to that in value. This law, they tell us, was made by an
excellent king who had more regard to the riches of his country than
to his own wealth, and therefore provided against the heaping up of
so much treasure as might impoverish the people. He thought that
moderate sum might be sufficient for any accident, if either the king
had occasion for it against the rebels, or the kingdom against the invasion
of an enemy; but that it was not enough to encourage a prince to invade
other men’s rights—a circumstance that was the chief cause
of his making that law. He also thought that it was a good provision
for that free circulation of money so necessary for the course of commerce
and exchange. And when a king must distribute all those extraordinary
accessions that increase treasure beyond the due pitch, it makes him
less disposed to oppress his subjects. Such a king as this will
be the terror of ill men, and will be beloved by all the good.

“If, I say, I should talk of these or such-like things to men
that had taken their bias another way, how deaf would they be to all
I could say!” “No doubt, very deaf,” answered
I; “and no wonder, for one is never to offer propositions or advice
that we are certain will not be entertained. Discourses so much
out of the road could not avail anything, nor have any effect on men
whose minds were prepossessed with different sentiments. This
philosophical way of speculation is not unpleasant among friends in
a free conversation; but there is no room for it in the courts of princes,
where great affairs are carried on by authority.” “That
is what I was saying,” replied he, “that there is no room
for philosophy in the courts of princes.” “Yes, there
is,” said I, “but not for this speculative philosophy, that
makes everything to be alike fitting at all times; but there is another
philosophy that is more pliable, that knows its proper scene, accommodates
itself to it, and teaches a man with propriety and decency to act that
part which has fallen to his share. If when one of Plautus’
comedies is upon the stage, and a company of servants are acting their
parts, you should come out in the garb of a philosopher, and repeat,
out of Octavia, a discourse of Seneca’s to Nero, would
it not be better for you to say nothing than by mixing things of such
different natures to make an impertinent tragi-comedy? for you spoil
and corrupt the play that is in hand when you mix with it things of
an opposite nature, even though they are much better. Therefore
go through with the play that is acting the best you can, and do not
confound it because another that is pleasanter comes into your thoughts.
It is even so in a commonwealth and in the councils of princes; if ill
opinions cannot be quite rooted out, and you cannot cure some received
vice according to your wishes, you must not, therefore, abandon the
commonwealth, for the same reasons as you should not forsake the ship
in a storm because you cannot command the winds. You are not obliged
to assault people with discourses that are out of their road, when you
see that their received notions must prevent your making an impression
upon them: you ought rather to cast about and to manage things with
all the dexterity in your power, so that, if you are not able to make
them go well, they may be as little ill as possible; for, except all
men were good, everything cannot be right, and that is a blessing that
I do not at present hope to see.” “According to your
argument,” answered he, “all that I could be able to do
would be to preserve myself from being mad while I endeavoured to cure
the madness of others; for, if I speak with, I must repeat what I have
said to you; and as for lying, whether a philosopher can do it or not
I cannot tell: I am sure I cannot do it. But though these discourses
may be uneasy and ungrateful to them, I do not see why they should seem
foolish or extravagant; indeed, if I should either propose such things
as Plato has contrived in his ‘Commonwealth,’ or as the
Utopians practise in theirs, though they might seem better, as certainly
they are, yet they are so different from our establishment, which is
founded on property (there being no such thing among them), that I could
not expect that it would have any effect on them. But such discourses
as mine, which only call past evils to mind and give warning of what
may follow, leave nothing in them that is so absurd that they may not
be used at any time, for they can only be unpleasant to those who are
resolved to run headlong the contrary way; and if we must let alone
everything as absurd or extravagant—which, by reason of the wicked
lives of many, may seem uncouth—we must, even among Christians,
give over pressing the greatest part of those things that Christ hath
taught us, though He has commanded us not to conceal them, but to proclaim
on the housetops that which He taught in secret. The greatest
parts of His precepts are more opposite to the lives of the men of this
age than any part of my discourse has been, but the preachers seem to
have learned that craft to which you advise me: for they, observing
that the world would not willingly suit their lives to the rules that
Christ has given, have fitted His doctrine, as if it had been a leaden
rule, to their lives, that so, some way or other, they might agree with
one another. But I see no other effect of this compliance except
it be that men become more secure in their wickedness by it; and this
is all the success that I can have in a court, for I must always differ
from the rest, and then I shall signify nothing; or, if I agree with
them, I shall then only help forward their madness. I do not comprehend
what you mean by your ‘casting about,’ or by ‘the
bending and handling things so dexterously that, if they go not well,
they may go as little ill as may be;’ for in courts they will
not bear with a man’s holding his peace or conniving at what others
do: a man must barefacedly approve of the worst counsels and consent
to the blackest designs, so that he would pass for a spy, or, possibly,
for a traitor, that did but coldly approve of such wicked practices;
and therefore when a man is engaged in such a society, he will be so
far from being able to mend matters by his ‘casting about,’
as you call it, that he will find no occasions of doing any good—the
ill company will sooner corrupt him than be the better for him; or if,
notwithstanding all their ill company, he still remains steady and innocent,
yet their follies and knavery will be imputed to him; and, by mixing
counsels with them, he must bear his share of all the blame that belongs
wholly to others.

“It was no ill simile by which Plato set forth the unreasonableness
of a philosopher’s meddling with government. ‘If a
man,’ says he, ‘were to see a great company run out every
day into the rain and take delight in being wet—if he knew that
it would be to no purpose for him to go and persuade them to return
to their houses in order to avoid the storm, and that all that could
be expected by his going to speak to them would be that he himself should
be as wet as they, it would be best for him to keep within doors, and,
since he had not influence enough to correct other people’s folly,
to take care to preserve himself.’

“Though, to speak plainly my real sentiments, I must freely
own that as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard
of all other things, I cannot think that a nation can be governed either
justly or happily: not justly, because the best things will fall to
the share of the worst men; nor happily, because all things will be
divided among a few (and even these are not in all respects happy),
the rest being left to be absolutely miserable. Therefore, when
I reflect on the wise and good constitution of the Utopians, among whom
all things are so well governed and with so few laws, where virtue hath
its due reward, and yet there is such an equality that every man lives
in plenty—when I compare with them so many other nations that
are still making new laws, and yet can never bring their constitution
to a right regulation; where, notwithstanding every one has his property,
yet all the laws that they can invent have not the power either to obtain
or preserve it, or even to enable men certainly to distinguish what
is their own from what is another’s, of which the many lawsuits
that every day break out, and are eternally depending, give too plain
a demonstration—when, I say, I balance all these things in my
thoughts, I grow more favourable to Plato, and do not wonder that he
resolved not to make any laws for such as would not submit to a community
of all things; for so wise a man could not but foresee that the setting
all upon a level was the only way to make a nation happy; which cannot
be obtained so long as there is property, for when every man draws to
himself all that he can compass, by one title or another, it must needs
follow that, how plentiful soever a nation may be, yet a few dividing
the wealth of it among themselves, the rest must fall into indigence.
So that there will be two sorts of people among them, who deserve that
their fortunes should be interchanged—the former useless, but
wicked and ravenous; and the latter, who by their constant industry
serve the public more than themselves, sincere and modest men—from
whence I am persuaded that till property is taken away, there can be
no equitable or just distribution of things, nor can the world be happily
governed; for as long as that is maintained, the greatest and the far
best part of mankind, will be still oppressed with a load of cares and
anxieties. I confess, without taking it quite away, those pressures
that lie on a great part of mankind may be made lighter, but they can
never be quite removed; for if laws were made to determine at how great
an extent in soil, and at how much money, every man must stop—to
limit the prince, that he might not grow too great; and to restrain
the people, that they might not become too insolent—and that none
might factiously aspire to public employments, which ought neither to
be sold nor made burdensome by a great expense, since otherwise those
that serve in them would be tempted to reimburse themselves by cheats
and violence, and it would become necessary to find out rich men for
undergoing those employments, which ought rather to be trusted to the
wise. These laws, I say, might have such effect as good diet and
care might have on a sick man whose recovery is desperate; they might
allay and mitigate the disease, but it could never be quite healed,
nor the body politic be brought again to a good habit as long as property
remains; and it will fall out, as in a complication of diseases, that
by applying a remedy to one sore you will provoke another, and that
which removes the one ill symptom produces others, while the strengthening
one part of the body weakens the rest.” “On the contrary,”
answered I, “it seems to me that men cannot live conveniently
where all things are common. How can there be any plenty where
every man will excuse himself from labour? for as the hope of gain doth
not excite him, so the confidence that he has in other men’s industry
may make him slothful. If people come to be pinched with want,
and yet cannot dispose of anything as their own, what can follow upon
this but perpetual sedition and bloodshed, especially when the reverence
and authority due to magistrates falls to the ground? for I cannot imagine
how that can be kept up among those that are in all things equal to
one another.” “I do not wonder,” said he, “that
it appears so to you, since you have no notion, or at least no right
one, of such a constitution; but if you had been in Utopia with me,
and had seen their laws and rules, as I did, for the space of five years,
in which I lived among them, and during which time I was so delighted
with them that indeed I should never have left them if it had not been
to make the discovery of that new world to the Europeans, you would
then confess that you had never seen a people so well constituted as
they.” “You will not easily persuade me,” said
Peter, “that any nation in that new world is better governed than
those among us; for as our understandings are not worse than theirs,
so our government (if I mistake not) being more ancient, a long practice
has helped us to find out many conveniences of life, and some happy
chances have discovered other things to us which no man’s understanding
could ever have invented.” “As for the antiquity either
of their government or of ours,” said he, “you cannot pass
a true judgment of it unless you had read their histories; for, if they
are to be believed, they had towns among them before these parts were
so much as inhabited; and as for those discoveries that have been either
hit on by chance or made by ingenious men, these might have happened
there as well as here. I do not deny but we are more ingenious
than they are, but they exceed us much in industry and application.
They knew little concerning us before our arrival among them.
They call us all by a general name of ‘The nations that lie beyond
the equinoctial line;’ for their chronicle mentions a shipwreck
that was made on their coast twelve hundred years ago, and that some
Romans and Egyptians that were in the ship, getting safe ashore, spent
the rest of their days amongst them; and such was their ingenuity that
from this single opportunity they drew the advantage of learning from
those unlooked-for guests, and acquired all the useful arts that were
then among the Romans, and which were known to these shipwrecked men;
and by the hints that they gave them they themselves found out even
some of those arts which they could not fully explain, so happily did
they improve that accident of having some of our people cast upon their
shore. But if such an accident has at any time brought any from
thence into Europe, we have been so far from improving it that we do
not so much as remember it, as, in aftertimes perhaps, it will be forgot
by our people that I was ever there; for though they, from one such
accident, made themselves masters of all the good inventions that were
among us, yet I believe it would be long before we should learn or put
in practice any of the good institutions that are among them.
And this is the true cause of their being better governed and living
happier than we, though we come not short of them in point of understanding
or outward advantages.” Upon this I said to him, “I
earnestly beg you would describe that island very particularly to us;
be not too short, but set out in order all things relating to their
soil, their rivers, their towns, their people, their manners, constitution,
laws, and, in a word, all that you imagine we desire to know; and you
may well imagine that we desire to know everything concerning them of
which we are hitherto ignorant.” “I will do it very
willingly,” said he, “for I have digested the whole matter
carefully, but it will take up some time.” “Let us
go, then,” said I, “first and dine, and then we shall have
leisure enough.” He consented; we went in and dined, and
after dinner came back and sat down in the same place. I ordered
my servants to take care that none might come and interrupt us, and
both Peter and I desired Raphael to be as good as his word. When
he saw that we were very intent upon it he paused a little to recollect
himself, and began in this manner:—

“The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad,
and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it
grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent.
Between its horns the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself
into a great bay, which is environed with land to the compass of about
five hundred miles, and is well secured from winds. In this bay
there is no great current; the whole coast is, as it were, one continued
harbour, which gives all that live in the island great convenience for
mutual commerce. But the entry into the bay, occasioned by rocks
on the one hand and shallows on the other, is very dangerous.
In the middle of it there is one single rock which appears above water,
and may, therefore, easily be avoided; and on the top of it there is
a tower, in which a garrison is kept; the other rocks lie under water,
and are very dangerous. The channel is known only to the natives;
so that if any stranger should enter into the bay without one of their
pilots he would run great danger of shipwreck. For even they themselves
could not pass it safe if some marks that are on the coast did not direct
their way; and if these should be but a little shifted, any fleet that
might come against them, how great soever it were, would be certainly
lost. On the other side of the island there are likewise many
harbours; and the coast is so fortified, both by nature and art, that
a small number of men can hinder the descent of a great army.
But they report (and there remains good marks of it to make it credible)
that this was no island at first, but a part of the continent.
Utopus, that conquered it (whose name it still carries, for Abraxa was
its first name), brought the rude and uncivilised inhabitants into such
a good government, and to that measure of politeness, that they now
far excel all the rest of mankind. Having soon subdued them, he
designed to separate them from the continent, and to bring the sea quite
round them. To accomplish this he ordered a deep channel to be
dug, fifteen miles long; and that the natives might not think he treated
them like slaves, he not only forced the inhabitants, but also his own
soldiers, to labour in carrying it on. As he set a vast number
of men to work, he, beyond all men’s expectations, brought it
to a speedy conclusion. And his neighbours, who at first laughed
at the folly of the undertaking, no sooner saw it brought to perfection
than they were struck with admiration and terror.

“There are fifty-four cities in the island, all large and well
built, the manners, customs, and laws of which are the same, and they
are all contrived as near in the same manner as the ground on which
they stand will allow. The nearest lie at least twenty-four miles’
distance from one another, and the most remote are not so far distant
but that a man can go on foot in one day from it to that which lies
next it. Every city sends three of their wisest senators once
a year to Amaurot, to consult about their common concerns; for that
is the chief town of the island, being situated near the centre of it,
so that it is the most convenient place for their assemblies.
The jurisdiction of every city extends at least twenty miles, and, where
the towns lie wider, they have much more ground. No town desires
to enlarge its bounds, for the people consider themselves rather as
tenants than landlords. They have built, over all the country,
farmhouses for husbandmen, which are well contrived, and furnished with
all things necessary for country labour. Inhabitants are sent,
by turns, from the cities to dwell in them; no country family has fewer
than forty men and women in it, besides two slaves. There is a
master and a mistress set over every family, and over thirty families
there is a magistrate. Every year twenty of this family come back
to the town after they have stayed two years in the country, and in
their room there are other twenty sent from the town, that they may
learn country work from those that have been already one year in the
country, as they must teach those that come to them the next from the
town. By this means such as dwell in those country farms are never
ignorant of agriculture, and so commit no errors which might otherwise
be fatal and bring them under a scarcity of corn. But though there
is every year such a shifting of the husbandmen to prevent any man being
forced against his will to follow that hard course of life too long,
yet many among them take such pleasure in it that they desire leave
to continue in it many years. These husbandmen till the ground,
breed cattle, hew wood, and convey it to the towns either by land or
water, as is most convenient. They breed an infinite multitude
of chickens in a very curious manner; for the hens do not sit and hatch
them, but a vast number of eggs are laid in a gentle and equal heat
in order to be hatched, and they are no sooner out of the shell, and
able to stir about, but they seem to consider those that feed them as
their mothers, and follow them as other chickens do the hen that hatched
them. They breed very few horses, but those they have are full
of mettle, and are kept only for exercising their youth in the art of
sitting and riding them; for they do not put them to any work, either
of ploughing or carriage, in which they employ oxen. For though
their horses are stronger, yet they find oxen can hold out longer; and
as they are not subject to so many diseases, so they are kept upon a
less charge and with less trouble. And even when they are so worn
out that they are no more fit for labour, they are good meat at last.
They sow no corn but that which is to be their bread; for they drink
either wine, cider or perry, and often water, sometimes boiled with
honey or liquorice, with which they abound; and though they know exactly
how much corn will serve every town and all that tract of country which
belongs to it, yet they sow much more and breed more cattle than are
necessary for their consumption, and they give that overplus of which
they make no use to their neighbours. When they want anything
in the country which it does not produce, they fetch that from the town,
without carrying anything in exchange for it. And the magistrates
of the town take care to see it given them; for they meet generally
in the town once a month, upon a festival day. When the time of
harvest comes, the magistrates in the country send to those in the towns
and let them know how many hands they will need for reaping the harvest;
and the number they call for being sent to them, they commonly despatch
it all in one day.

OF THEIR TOWNS, PARTICULARLY OF AMAUROT

“He that knows one of their towns knows them all—they
are so like one another, except where the situation makes some difference.
I shall therefore describe one of them, and none is so proper as Amaurot;
for as none is more eminent (all the rest yielding in precedence to
this, because it is the seat of their supreme council), so there was
none of them better known to me, I having lived five years all together
in it.

“It lies upon the side of a hill, or, rather, a rising ground.
Its figure is almost square, for from the one side of it, which shoots
up almost to the top of the hill, it runs down, in a descent for two
miles, to the river Anider; but it is a little broader the other way
that runs along by the bank of that river. The Anider rises about
eighty miles above Amaurot, in a small spring at first. But other
brooks falling into it, of which two are more considerable than the
rest, as it runs by Amaurot it is grown half a mile broad; but, it still
grows larger and larger, till, after sixty miles’ course below
it, it is lost in the ocean. Between the town and the sea, and
for some miles above the town, it ebbs and flows every six hours with
a strong current. The tide comes up about thirty miles so full
that there is nothing but salt water in the river, the fresh water being
driven back with its force; and above that, for some miles, the water
is brackish; but a little higher, as it runs by the town, it is quite
fresh; and when the tide ebbs, it continues fresh all along to the sea.
There is a bridge cast over the river, not of timber, but of fair stone,
consisting of many stately arches; it lies at that part of the town
which is farthest from the sea, so that the ships, without any hindrance,
lie all along the side of the town. There is, likewise, another
river that runs by it, which, though it is not great, yet it runs pleasantly,
for it rises out of the same hill on which the town stands, and so runs
down through it and falls into the Anider. The inhabitants have
fortified the fountain-head of this river, which springs a little without
the towns; that so, if they should happen to be besieged, the enemy
might not be able to stop or divert the course of the water, nor poison
it; from thence it is carried, in earthen pipes, to the lower streets.
And for those places of the town to which the water of that small river
cannot be conveyed, they have great cisterns for receiving the rain-water,
which supplies the want of the other. The town is compassed with
a high and thick wall, in which there are many towers and forts; there
is also a broad and deep dry ditch, set thick with thorns, cast round
three sides of the town, and the river is instead of a ditch on the
fourth side. The streets are very convenient for all carriage,
and are well sheltered from the winds. Their buildings are good,
and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one house.
The streets are twenty feet broad; there lie gardens behind all their
houses. These are large, but enclosed with buildings, that on
all hands face the streets, so that every house has both a door to the
street and a back door to the garden. Their doors have all two
leaves, which, as they are easily opened, so they shut of their own
accord; and, there being no property among them, every man may freely
enter into any house whatsoever. At every ten years’ end
they shift their houses by lots. They cultivate their gardens
with great care, so that they have both vines, fruits, herbs, and flowers
in them; and all is so well ordered and so finely kept that I never
saw gardens anywhere that were both so fruitful and so beautiful as
theirs. And this humour of ordering their gardens so well is not
only kept up by the pleasure they find in it, but also by an emulation
between the inhabitants of the several streets, who vie with each other.
And there is, indeed, nothing belonging to the whole town that is both
more useful and more pleasant. So that he who founded the town
seems to have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens; for
they say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by Utopus,
but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement of it
to be added by those that should come after him, that being too much
for one man to bring to perfection. Their records, that contain
the history of their town and State, are preserved with an exact care,
and run backwards seventeen hundred and sixty years. From these
it appears that their houses were at first low and mean, like cottages,
made of any sort of timber, and were built with mud walls and thatched
with straw. But now their houses are three storeys high, the fronts
of them are faced either with stone, plastering, or brick, and between
the facings of their walls they throw in their rubbish. Their
roofs are flat, and on them they lay a sort of plaster, which costs
very little, and yet is so tempered that it is not apt to take fire,
and yet resists the weather more than lead. They have great quantities
of glass among them, with which they glaze their windows; they use also
in their windows a thin linen cloth, that is so oiled or gummed that
it both keeps out the wind and gives free admission to the light.

OF THEIR MAGISTRATES

“Thirty families choose every year a magistrate, who was anciently
called the Syphogrant, but is now called the Philarch; and over every
ten Syphogrants, with the families subject to them, there is another
magistrate, who was anciently called the Tranibore, but of late the
Archphilarch. All the Syphogrants, who are in number two hundred,
choose the Prince out of a list of four who are named by the people
of the four divisions of the city; but they take an oath, before they
proceed to an election, that they will choose him whom they think most
fit for the office: they give him their voices secretly, so that it
is not known for whom every one gives his suffrage. The Prince
is for life, unless he is removed upon suspicion of some design to enslave
the people. The Tranibors are new chosen every year, but yet they
are, for the most part, continued; all their other magistrates are only
annual. The Tranibors meet every third day, and oftener if necessary,
and consult with the Prince either concerning the affairs of the State
in general, or such private differences as may arise sometimes among
the people, though that falls out but seldom. There are always
two Syphogrants called into the council chamber, and these are changed
every day. It is a fundamental rule of their government, that
no conclusion can be made in anything that relates to the public till
it has been first debated three several days in their council.
It is death for any to meet and consult concerning the State, unless
it be either in their ordinary council, or in the assembly of the whole
body of the people.

“These things have been so provided among them that the Prince
and the Tranibors may not conspire together to change the government
and enslave the people; and therefore when anything of great importance
is set on foot, it is sent to the Syphogrants, who, after they have
communicated it to the families that belong to their divisions, and
have considered it among themselves, make report to the senate; and,
upon great occasions, the matter is referred to the council of the whole
island. One rule observed in their council is, never to debate
a thing on the same day in which it is first proposed; for that is always
referred to the next meeting, that so men may not rashly and in the
heat of discourse engage themselves too soon, which might bias them
so much that, instead of consulting the good of the public, they might
rather study to support their first opinions, and by a perverse and
preposterous sort of shame hazard their country rather than endanger
their own reputation, or venture the being suspected to have wanted
foresight in the expedients that they at first proposed; and therefore,
to prevent this, they take care that they may rather be deliberate than
sudden in their motions.

OF THEIR TRADES, AND MANNER OF LIFE

“Agriculture is that which is so universally understood among
them that no person, either man or woman, is ignorant of it; they are
instructed in it from their childhood, partly by what they learn at
school, and partly by practice, they being led out often into the fields
about the town, where they not only see others at work but are likewise
exercised in it themselves. Besides agriculture, which is so common
to them all, every man has some peculiar trade to which he applies himself;
such as the manufacture of wool or flax, masonry, smith’s work,
or carpenter’s work; for there is no sort of trade that is in
great esteem among them. Throughout the island they wear the same
sort of clothes, without any other distinction except what is necessary
to distinguish the two sexes and the married and unmarried. The
fashion never alters, and as it is neither disagreeable nor uneasy,
so it is suited to the climate, and calculated both for their summers
and winters. Every family makes their own clothes; but all among
them, women as well as men, learn one or other of the trades formerly
mentioned. Women, for the most part, deal in wool and flax, which
suit best with their weakness, leaving the ruder trades to the men.
The same trade generally passes down from father to son, inclinations
often following descent: but if any man’s genius lies another
way he is, by adoption, translated into a family that deals in the trade
to which he is inclined; and when that is to be done, care is taken,
not only by his father, but by the magistrate, that he may be put to
a discreet and good man: and if, after a person has learned one trade,
he desires to acquire another, that is also allowed, and is managed
in the same manner as the former. When he has learned both, he
follows that which he likes best, unless the public has more occasion
for the other.

The chief, and almost the only, business of the Syphogrants is to
take care that no man may live idle, but that every one may follow his
trade diligently; yet they do not wear themselves out with perpetual
toil from morning to night, as if they were beasts of burden, which
as it is indeed a heavy slavery, so it is everywhere the common course
of life amongst all mechanics except the Utopians: but they, dividing
the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint six of these for work,
three of which are before dinner and three after; they then sup, and
at eight o’clock, counting from noon, go to bed and sleep eight
hours: the rest of their time, besides that taken up in work, eating,
and sleeping, is left to every man’s discretion; yet they are
not to abuse that interval to luxury and idleness, but must employ it
in some proper exercise, according to their various inclinations, which
is, for the most part, reading. It is ordinary to have public
lectures every morning before daybreak, at which none are obliged to
appear but those who are marked out for literature; yet a great many,
both men and women, of all ranks, go to hear lectures of one sort or
other, according to their inclinations: but if others that are not made
for contemplation, choose rather to employ themselves at that time in
their trades, as many of them do, they are not hindered, but are rather
commended, as men that take care to serve their country. After
supper they spend an hour in some diversion, in summer in their gardens,
and in winter in the halls where they eat, where they entertain each
other either with music or discourse. They do not so much as know
dice, or any such foolish and mischievous games. They have, however,
two sorts of games not unlike our chess; the one is between several
numbers, in which one number, as it were, consumes another; the other
resembles a battle between the virtues and the vices, in which the enmity
in the vices among themselves, and their agreement against virtue, is
not unpleasantly represented; together with the special opposition between
the particular virtues and vices; as also the methods by which vice
either openly assaults or secretly undermines virtue; and virtue, on
the other hand, resists it. But the time appointed for labour
is to be narrowly examined, otherwise you may imagine that since there
are only six hours appointed for work, they may fall under a scarcity
of necessary provisions: but it is so far from being true that this
time is not sufficient for supplying them with plenty of all things,
either necessary or convenient, that it is rather too much; and this
you will easily apprehend if you consider how great a part of all other
nations is quite idle. First, women generally do little, who are
the half of mankind; and if some few women are diligent, their husbands
are idle: then consider the great company of idle priests, and of those
that are called religious men; add to these all rich men, chiefly those
that have estates in land, who are called noblemen and gentlemen, together
with their families, made up of idle persons, that are kept more for
show than use; add to these all those strong and lusty beggars that
go about pretending some disease in excuse for their begging; and upon
the whole account you will find that the number of those by whose labours
mankind is supplied is much less than you perhaps imagined: then consider
how few of those that work are employed in labours that are of real
service, for we, who measure all things by money, give rise to many
trades that are both vain and superfluous, and serve only to support
riot and luxury: for if those who work were employed only in such things
as the conveniences of life require, there would be such an abundance
of them that the prices of them would so sink that tradesmen could not
be maintained by their gains; if all those who labour about useless
things were set to more profitable employments, and if all they that
languish out their lives in sloth and idleness (every one of whom consumes
as much as any two of the men that are at work) were forced to labour,
you may easily imagine that a small proportion of time would serve for
doing all that is either necessary, profitable, or pleasant to mankind,
especially while pleasure is kept within its due bounds: this appears
very plainly in Utopia; for there, in a great city, and in all the territory
that lies round it, you can scarce find five hundred, either men or
women, by their age and strength capable of labour, that are not engaged
in it. Even the Syphogrants, though excused by the law, yet do
not excuse themselves, but work, that by their examples they may excite
the industry of the rest of the people; the like exemption is allowed
to those who, being recommended to the people by the priests, are, by
the secret suffrages of the Syphogrants, privileged from labour, that
they may apply themselves wholly to study; and if any of these fall
short of those hopes that they seemed at first to give, they are obliged
to return to work; and sometimes a mechanic that so employs his leisure
hours as to make a considerable advancement in learning is eased from
being a tradesman and ranked among their learned men. Out of these
they choose their ambassadors, their priests, their Tranibors, and the
Prince himself, anciently called their Barzenes, but is called of late
their Ademus.

“And thus from the great numbers among them that are neither
suffered to be idle nor to be employed in any fruitless labour, you
may easily make the estimate how much may be done in those few hours
in which they are obliged to labour. But, besides all that has
been already said, it is to be considered that the needful arts among
them are managed with less labour than anywhere else. The building
or the repairing of houses among us employ many hands, because often
a thriftless heir suffers a house that his father built to fall into
decay, so that his successor must, at a great cost, repair that which
he might have kept up with a small charge; it frequently happens that
the same house which one person built at a vast expense is neglected
by another, who thinks he has a more delicate sense of the beauties
of architecture, and he, suffering it to fall to ruin, builds another
at no less charge. But among the Utopians all things are so regulated
that men very seldom build upon a new piece of ground, and are not only
very quick in repairing their houses, but show their foresight in preventing
their decay, so that their buildings are preserved very long with but
very little labour, and thus the builders, to whom that care belongs,
are often without employment, except the hewing of timber and the squaring
of stones, that the materials may be in readiness for raising a building
very suddenly when there is any occasion for it. As to their clothes,
observe how little work is spent in them; while they are at labour they
are clothed with leather and skins, cut carelessly about them, which
will last seven years, and when they appear in public they put on an
upper garment which hides the other; and these are all of one colour,
and that is the natural colour of the wool. As they need less
woollen cloth than is used anywhere else, so that which they make use
of is much less costly; they use linen cloth more, but that is prepared
with less labour, and they value cloth only by the whiteness of the
linen or the cleanness of the wool, without much regard to the fineness
of the thread. While in other places four or five upper garments
of woollen cloth of different colours, and as many vests of silk, will
scarce serve one man, and while those that are nicer think ten too few,
every man there is content with one, which very often serves him two
years; nor is there anything that can tempt a man to desire more, for
if he had them he would neither be the, warmer nor would he make one
jot the better appearance for it. And thus, since they are all
employed in some useful labour, and since they content themselves with
fewer things, it falls out that there is a great abundance of all things
among them; so that it frequently happens that, for want of other work,
vast numbers are sent out to mend the highways; but when no public undertaking
is to be performed, the hours of working are lessened. The magistrates
never engage the people in unnecessary labour, since the chief end of
the constitution is to regulate labour by the necessities of the public,
and to allow the people as much time as is necessary for the improvement
of their minds, in which they think the happiness of life consists.

OF THEIR TRAFFIC

“But it is now time to explain to you the mutual intercourse
of this people, their commerce, and the rules by which all things are
distributed among them.

“As their cities are composed of families, so their families
are made up of those that are nearly related to one another. Their
women, when they grow up, are married out, but all the males, both children
and grand-children, live still in the same house, in great obedience
to their common parent, unless age has weakened his understanding, and
in that case he that is next to him in age comes in his room; but lest
any city should become either too great, or by any accident be dispeopled,
provision is made that none of their cities may contain above six thousand
families, besides those of the country around it. No family may
have less than ten and more than sixteen persons in it, but there can
be no determined number for the children under age; this rule is easily
observed by removing some of the children of a more fruitful couple
to any other family that does not abound so much in them. By the
same rule they supply cities that do not increase so fast from others
that breed faster; and if there is any increase over the whole island,
then they draw out a number of their citizens out of the several towns
and send them over to the neighbouring continent, where, if they find
that the inhabitants have more soil than they can well cultivate, they
fix a colony, taking the inhabitants into their society if they are
willing to live with them; and where they do that of their own accord,
they quickly enter into their method of life and conform to their rules,
and this proves a happiness to both nations; for, according to their
constitution, such care is taken of the soil that it becomes fruitful
enough for both, though it might be otherwise too narrow and barren
for any one of them. But if the natives refuse to conform themselves
to their laws they drive them out of those bounds which they mark out
for themselves, and use force if they resist, for they account it a
very just cause of war for a nation to hinder others from possessing
a part of that soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered
to lie idle and uncultivated, since every man has, by the law of nature,
a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his
subsistence. If an accident has so lessened the number of the
inhabitants of any of their towns that it cannot be made up from the
other towns of the island without diminishing them too much (which is
said to have fallen out but twice since they were first a people, when
great numbers were carried off by the plague), the loss is then supplied
by recalling as many as are wanted from their colonies, for they will
abandon these rather than suffer the towns in the island to sink too
low.

“But to return to their manner of living in society: the oldest
man of every family, as has been already said, is its governor; wives
serve their husbands, and children their parents, and always the younger
serves the elder. Every city is divided into four equal parts,
and in the middle of each there is a market-place. What is brought
thither, and manufactured by the several families, is carried from thence
to houses appointed for that purpose, in which all things of a sort
are laid by themselves; and thither every father goes, and takes whatsoever
he or his family stand in need of, without either paying for it or leaving
anything in exchange. There is no reason for giving a denial to
any person, since there is such plenty of everything among them; and
there is no danger of a man’s asking for more than he needs; they
have no inducements to do this, since they are sure they shall always
be supplied: it is the fear of want that makes any of the whole race
of animals either greedy or ravenous; but, besides fear, there is in
man a pride that makes him fancy it a particular glory to excel others
in pomp and excess; but by the laws of the Utopians, there is no room
for this. Near these markets there are others for all sorts of
provisions, where there are not only herbs, fruits, and bread, but also
fish, fowl, and cattle. There are also, without their towns, places
appointed near some running water for killing their beasts and for washing
away their filth, which is done by their slaves; for they suffer none
of their citizens to kill their cattle, because they think that pity
and good-nature, which are among the best of those affections that are
born with us, are much impaired by the butchering of animals; nor do
they suffer anything that is foul or unclean to be brought within their
towns, lest the air should be infected by ill-smells, which might prejudice
their health. In every street there are great halls, that lie
at an equal distance from each other, distinguished by particular names.
The Syphogrants dwell in those that are set over thirty families, fifteen
lying on one side of it, and as many on the other. In these halls
they all meet and have their repasts; the stewards of every one of them
come to the market-place at an appointed hour, and according to the
number of those that belong to the hall they carry home provisions.
But they take more care of their sick than of any others; these are
lodged and provided for in public hospitals. They have belonging
to every town four hospitals, that are built without their walls, and
are so large that they may pass for little towns; by this means, if
they had ever such a number of sick persons, they could lodge them conveniently,
and at such a distance that such of them as are sick of infectious diseases
may be kept so far from the rest that there can be no danger of contagion.
The hospitals are furnished and stored with all things that are convenient
for the ease and recovery of the sick; and those that are put in them
are looked after with such tender and watchful care, and are so constantly
attended by their skilful physicians, that as none is sent to them against
their will, so there is scarce one in a whole town that, if he should
fall ill, would not choose rather to go thither than lie sick at home.

“After the steward of the hospitals has taken for the sick
whatsoever the physician prescribes, then the best things that are left
in the market are distributed equally among the halls in proportion
to their numbers; only, in the first place, they serve the Prince, the
Chief Priest, the Tranibors, the Ambassadors, and strangers, if there
are any, which, indeed, falls out but seldom, and for whom there are
houses, well furnished, particularly appointed for their reception when
they come among them. At the hours of dinner and supper the whole
Syphogranty being called together by sound of trumpet, they meet and
eat together, except only such as are in the hospitals or lie sick at
home. Yet, after the halls are served, no man is hindered to carry
provisions home from the market-place, for they know that none does
that but for some good reason; for though any that will may eat at home,
yet none does it willingly, since it is both ridiculous and foolish
for any to give themselves the trouble to make ready an ill dinner at
home when there is a much more plentiful one made ready for him so near
hand. All the uneasy and sordid services about these halls are
performed by their slaves; but the dressing and cooking their meat,
and the ordering their tables, belong only to the women, all those of
every family taking it by turns. They sit at three or more tables,
according to their number; the men sit towards the wall, and the women
sit on the other side, that if any of them should be taken suddenly
ill, which is no uncommon case amongst women with child, she may, without
disturbing the rest, rise and go to the nurses’ room (who are
there with the sucking children), where there is always clean water
at hand and cradles, in which they may lay the young children if there
is occasion for it, and a fire, that they may shift and dress them before
it. Every child is nursed by its own mother if death or sickness
does not intervene; and in that case the Syphogrants’ wives find
out a nurse quickly, which is no hard matter, for any one that can do
it offers herself cheerfully; for as they are much inclined to that
piece of mercy, so the child whom they nurse considers the nurse as
its mother. All the children under five years old sit among the
nurses; the rest of the younger sort of both sexes, till they are fit
for marriage, either serve those that sit at table, or, if they are
not strong enough for that, stand by them in great silence and eat what
is given them; nor have they any other formality of dining. In
the middle of the first table, which stands across the upper end of
the hall, sit the Syphogrant and his wife, for that is the chief and
most conspicuous place; next to him sit two of the most ancient, for
there go always four to a mess. If there is a temple within the
Syphogranty, the Priest and his wife sit with the Syphogrant above all
the rest; next them there is a mixture of old and young, who are so
placed that as the young are set near others, so they are mixed with
the more ancient; which, they say, was appointed on this account: that
the gravity of the old people, and the reverence that is due to them,
might restrain the younger from all indecent words and gestures.
Dishes are not served up to the whole table at first, but the best are
first set before the old, whose seats are distinguished from the young,
and, after them, all the rest are served alike. The old men distribute
to the younger any curious meats that happen to be set before them,
if there is not such an abundance of them that the whole company may
be served alike.

“Thus old men are honoured with a particular respect, yet all
the rest fare as well as they. Both dinner and supper are begun
with some lecture of morality that is read to them; but it is so short
that it is not tedious nor uneasy to them to hear it. From hence
the old men take occasion to entertain those about them with some useful
and pleasant enlargements; but they do not engross the whole discourse
so to themselves during their meals that the younger may not put in
for a share; on the contrary, they engage them to talk, that so they
may, in that free way of conversation, find out the force of every one’s
spirit and observe his temper. They despatch their dinners quickly,
but sit long at supper, because they go to work after the one, and are
to sleep after the other, during which they think the stomach carries
on the concoction more vigorously. They never sup without music,
and there is always fruit served up after meat; while they are at table
some burn perfumes and sprinkle about fragrant ointments and sweet waters—in
short, they want nothing that may cheer up their spirits; they give
themselves a large allowance that way, and indulge themselves in all
such pleasures as are attended with no inconvenience. Thus do
those that are in the towns live together; but in the country, where
they live at a great distance, every one eats at home, and no family
wants any necessary sort of provision, for it is from them that provisions
are sent unto those that live in the towns.

OF THE TRAVELLING OF THE UTOPIANS

If any man has a mind to visit his friends that live in some other
town, or desires to travel and see the rest of the country, he obtains
leave very easily from the Syphogrant and Tranibors, when there is no
particular occasion for him at home. Such as travel carry with
them a passport from the Prince, which both certifies the licence that
is granted for travelling, and limits the time of their return.
They are furnished with a waggon and a slave, who drives the oxen and
looks after them; but, unless there are women in the company, the waggon
is sent back at the end of the journey as a needless encumbrance.
While they are on the road they carry no provisions with them, yet they
want for nothing, but are everywhere treated as if they were at home.
If they stay in any place longer than a night, every one follows his
proper occupation, and is very well used by those of his own trade;
but if any man goes out of the city to which he belongs without leave,
and is found rambling without a passport, he is severely treated, he
is punished as a fugitive, and sent home disgracefully; and, if he falls
again into the like fault, is condemned to slavery. If any man
has a mind to travel only over the precinct of his own city, he may
freely do it, with his father’s permission and his wife’s
consent; but when he comes into any of the country houses, if he expects
to be entertained by them, he must labour with them and conform to their
rules; and if he does this, he may freely go over the whole precinct,
being then as useful to the city to which he belongs as if he were still
within it. Thus you see that there are no idle persons among them,
nor pretences of excusing any from labour. There are no taverns,
no ale-houses, nor stews among them, nor any other occasions of corrupting
each other, of getting into corners, or forming themselves into parties;
all men live in full view, so that all are obliged both to perform their
ordinary task and to employ themselves well in their spare hours; and
it is certain that a people thus ordered must live in great abundance
of all things, and these being equally distributed among them, no man
can want or be obliged to beg.

“In their great council at Amaurot, to which there are three
sent from every town once a year, they examine what towns abound in
provisions and what are under any scarcity, that so the one may be furnished
from the other; and this is done freely, without any sort of exchange;
for, according to their plenty or scarcity, they supply or are supplied
from one another, so that indeed the whole island is, as it were, one
family. When they have thus taken care of their whole country,
and laid up stores for two years (which they do to prevent the ill consequences
of an unfavourable season), they order an exportation of the overplus,
both of corn, honey, wool, flax, wood, wax, tallow, leather, and cattle,
which they send out, commonly in great quantities, to other nations.
They order a seventh part of all these goods to be freely given to the
poor of the countries to which they send them, and sell the rest at
moderate rates; and by this exchange they not only bring back those
few things that they need at home (for, indeed, they scarce need anything
but iron), but likewise a great deal of gold and silver; and by their
driving this trade so long, it is not to be imagined how vast a treasure
they have got among them, so that now they do not much care whether
they sell off their merchandise for money in hand or upon trust.
A great part of their treasure is now in bonds; but in all their contracts
no private man stands bound, but the writing runs in the name of the
town; and the towns that owe them money raise it from those private
hands that owe it to them, lay it up in their public chamber, or enjoy
the profit of it till the Utopians call for it; and they choose rather
to let the greatest part of it lie in their hands, who make advantage
by it, than to call for it themselves; but if they see that any of their
other neighbours stand more in need of it, then they call it in and
lend it to them. Whenever they are engaged in war, which is the
only occasion in which their treasure can be usefully employed, they
make use of it themselves; in great extremities or sudden accidents
they employ it in hiring foreign troops, whom they more willingly expose
to danger than their own people; they give them great pay, knowing well
that this will work even on their enemies; that it will engage them
either to betray their own side, or, at least, to desert it; and that
it is the best means of raising mutual jealousies among them.
For this end they have an incredible treasure; but they do not keep
it as a treasure, but in such a manner as I am almost afraid to tell,
lest you think it so extravagant as to be hardly credible. This
I have the more reason to apprehend because, if I had not seen it myself,
I could not have been easily persuaded to have believed it upon any
man’s report.

“It is certain that all things appear incredible to us in proportion
as they differ from known customs; but one who can judge aright will
not wonder to find that, since their constitution differs so much from
ours, their value of gold and silver should be measured by a very different
standard; for since they have no use for money among themselves, but
keep it as a provision against events which seldom happen, and between
which there are generally long intervening intervals, they value it
no farther than it deserves—that is, in proportion to its use.
So that it is plain they must prefer iron either to gold or silver,
for men can no more live without iron than without fire or water; but
Nature has marked out no use for the other metals so essential as not
easily to be dispensed with. The folly of men has enhanced the
value of gold and silver because of their scarcity; whereas, on the
contrary, it is their opinion that Nature, as an indulgent parent, has
freely given us all the best things in great abundance, such as water
and earth, but has laid up and hid from us the things that are vain
and useless.

“If these metals were laid up in any tower in the kingdom it
would raise a jealousy of the Prince and Senate, and give birth to that
foolish mistrust into which the people are apt to fall—a jealousy
of their intending to sacrifice the interest of the public to their
own private advantage. If they should work it into vessels, or
any sort of plate, they fear that the people might grow too fond of
it, and so be unwilling to let the plate be run down, if a war made
it necessary, to employ it in paying their soldiers. To prevent
all these inconveniences they have fallen upon an expedient which, as
it agrees with their other policy, so is it very different from ours,
and will scarce gain belief among us who value gold so much, and lay
it up so carefully. They eat and drink out of vessels of earth
or glass, which make an agreeable appearance, though formed of brittle
materials; while they make their chamber-pots and close-stools of gold
and silver, and that not only in their public halls but in their private
houses. Of the same metals they likewise make chains and fetters
for their slaves, to some of which, as a badge of infamy, they hang
an earring of gold, and make others wear a chain or a coronet of the
same metal; and thus they take care by all possible means to render
gold and silver of no esteem; and from hence it is that while other
nations part with their gold and silver as unwillingly as if one tore
out their bowels, those of Utopia would look on their giving in all
they possess of those metals (when there were any use for them) but
as the parting with a trifle, or as we would esteem the loss of a penny!
They find pearls on their coasts, and diamonds and carbuncles on their
rocks; they do not look after them, but, if they find them by chance,
they polish them, and with them they adorn their children, who are delighted
with them, and glory in them during their childhood; but when they grow
to years, and see that none but children use such baubles, they of their
own accord, without being bid by their parents, lay them aside, and
would be as much ashamed to use them afterwards as children among us,
when they come to years, are of their puppets and other toys.

“I never saw a clearer instance of the opposite impressions
that different customs make on people than I observed in the ambassadors
of the Anemolians, who came to Amaurot when I was there. As they
came to treat of affairs of great consequence, the deputies from several
towns met together to wait for their coming. The ambassadors of
the nations that lie near Utopia, knowing their customs, and that fine
clothes are in no esteem among them, that silk is despised, and gold
is a badge of infamy, used to come very modestly clothed; but the Anemolians,
lying more remote, and having had little commerce with them, understanding
that they were coarsely clothed, and all in the same manner, took it
for granted that they had none of those fine things among them of which
they made no use; and they, being a vainglorious rather than a wise
people, resolved to set themselves out with so much pomp that they should
look like gods, and strike the eyes of the poor Utopians with their
splendour. Thus three ambassadors made their entry with a hundred
attendants, all clad in garments of different colours, and the greater
part in silk; the ambassadors themselves, who were of the nobility of
their country, were in cloth-of-gold, and adorned with massy chains,
earrings and rings of gold; their caps were covered with bracelets set
full of pearls and other gems—in a word, they were set out with
all those things that among the Utopians were either the badges of slavery,
the marks of infamy, or the playthings of children. It was not
unpleasant to see, on the one side, how they looked big, when they compared
their rich habits with the plain clothes of the Utopians, who were come
out in great numbers to see them make their entry; and, on the other,
to observe how much they were mistaken in the impression which they
hoped this pomp would have made on them. It appeared so ridiculous
a show to all that had never stirred out of their country, and had not
seen the customs of other nations, that though they paid some reverence
to those that were the most meanly clad, as if they had been the ambassadors,
yet when they saw the ambassadors themselves so full of gold and chains,
they looked upon them as slaves, and forbore to treat them with reverence.
You might have seen the children who were grown big enough to despise
their playthings, and who had thrown away their jewels, call to their
mothers, push them gently, and cry out, ‘See that great fool,
that wears pearls and gems as if he were yet a child!’ while their
mothers very innocently replied, ‘Hold your peace! this, I believe,
is one of the ambassadors’ fools.’ Others censured
the fashion of their chains, and observed, ‘That they were of
no use, for they were too slight to bind their slaves, who could easily
break them; and, besides, hung so loose about them that they thought
it easy to throw their away, and so get from them.” But
after the ambassadors had stayed a day among them, and saw so vast a
quantity of gold in their houses (which was as much despised by them
as it was esteemed in other nations), and beheld more gold and silver
in the chains and fetters of one slave than all their ornaments amounted
to, their plumes fell, and they were ashamed of all that glory for which
they had formed valued themselves, and accordingly laid it aside—a
resolution that they immediately took when, on their engaging in some
free discourse with the Utopians, they discovered their sense of such
things and their other customs. The Utopians wonder how any man
should be so much taken with the glaring doubtful lustre of a jewel
or a stone, that can look up to a star or to the sun himself; or how
any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread;
for, how fine soever that thread may be, it was once no better than
the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep, was a sheep still, for all its
wearing it. They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself
is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed that even
man, for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet
be thought of less value than this metal; that a man of lead, who has
no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should
have many wise and good men to serve him, only because he has a great
heap of that metal; and that if it should happen that by some accident
or trick of law (which, sometimes produces as great changes as chance
itself) all this wealth should pass from the master to the meanest varlet
of his whole family, he himself would very soon become one of his servants,
as if he were a thing that belonged to his wealth, and so were bound
to follow its fortune! But they much more admire and detest the
folly of those who, when they see a rich man, though they neither owe
him anything, nor are in any sort dependent on his bounty, yet, merely
because he is rich, give him little less than divine honours, even though
they know him to be so covetous and base-minded that, notwithstanding
all his wealth, he will not part with one farthing of it to them as
long as he lives!

“These and such like notions have that people imbibed, partly
from their education, being bred in a country whose customs and laws
are opposite to all such foolish maxims, and partly from their learning
and studies—for though there are but few in any town that are
so wholly excused from labour as to give themselves entirely up to their
studies (these being only such persons as discover from their childhood
an extraordinary capacity and disposition for letters), yet their children
and a great part of the nation, both men and women, are taught to spend
those hours in which they are not obliged to work in reading; and this
they do through the whole progress of life. They have all their
learning in their own tongue, which is both a copious and pleasant language,
and in which a man can fully express his mind; it runs over a great
tract of many countries, but it is not equally pure in all places.
They had never so much as heard of the names of any of those philosophers
that are so famous in these parts of the world, before we went among
them; and yet they had made the same discoveries as the Greeks, both
in music, logic, arithmetic, and geometry. But as they are almost
in everything equal to the ancient philosophers, so they far exceed
our modern logicians for they have never yet fallen upon the barbarous
niceties that our youth are forced to learn in those trifling logical
schools that are among us. They are so far from minding chimeras
and fantastical images made in the mind that none of them could comprehend
what we meant when we talked to them of a man in the abstract as common
to all men in particular (so that though we spoke of him as a thing
that we could point at with our fingers, yet none of them could perceive
him) and yet distinct from every one, as if he were some monstrous Colossus
or giant; yet, for all this ignorance of these empty notions, they knew
astronomy, and were perfectly acquainted with the motions of the heavenly
bodies; and have many instruments, well contrived and divided, by which
they very accurately compute the course and positions of the sun, moon,
and stars. But for the cheat of divining by the stars, by their
oppositions or conjunctions, it has not so much as entered into their
thoughts. They have a particular sagacity, founded upon much observation,
in judging of the weather, by which they know when they may look for
rain, wind, or other alterations in the air; but as to the philosophy
of these things, the cause of the saltness of the sea, of its ebbing
and flowing, and of the original and nature both of the heavens and
the earth, they dispute of them partly as our ancient philosophers have
done, and partly upon some new hypothesis, in which, as they differ
from them, so they do not in all things agree among themselves.

“As to moral philosophy, they have the same disputes among
them as we have here. They examine what are properly good, both
for the body and the mind; and whether any outward thing can be called
truly good, or if that term belong only to the endowments of
the soul. They inquire, likewise, into the nature of virtue and
pleasure. But their chief dispute is concerning the happiness
of a man, and wherein it consists—whether in some one thing or
in a great many. They seem, indeed, more inclinable to that opinion
that places, if not the whole, yet the chief part, of a man’s
happiness in pleasure; and, what may seem more strange, they make use
of arguments even from religion, notwithstanding its severity and roughness,
for the support of that opinion so indulgent to pleasure; for they never
dispute concerning happiness without fetching some arguments from the
principles of religion as well as from natural reason, since without
the former they reckon that all our inquiries after happiness must be
but conjectural and defective.

“These are their religious principles:—That the soul
of man is immortal, and that God of His goodness has designed that it
should be happy; and that He has, therefore, appointed rewards for good
and virtuous actions, and punishments for vice, to be distributed after
this life. Though these principles of religion are conveyed down
among them by tradition, they think that even reason itself determines
a man to believe and acknowledge them; and freely confess that if these
were taken away, no man would be so insensible as not to seek after
pleasure by all possible means, lawful or unlawful, using only this
caution—that a lesser pleasure might not stand in the way of a
greater, and that no pleasure ought to be pursued that should draw a
great deal of pain after it; for they think it the maddest thing in
the world to pursue virtue, that is a sour and difficult thing, and
not only to renounce the pleasures of life, but willingly to undergo
much pain and trouble, if a man has no prospect of a reward. And
what reward can there be for one that has passed his whole life, not
only without pleasure, but in pain, if there is nothing to be expected
after death? Yet they do not place happiness in all sorts of pleasures,
but only in those that in themselves are good and honest. There
is a party among them who place happiness in bare virtue; others think
that our natures are conducted by virtue to happiness, as that which
is the chief good of man. They define virtue thus—that it
is a living according to Nature, and think that we are made by God for
that end; they believe that a man then follows the dictates of Nature
when he pursues or avoids things according to the direction of reason.
They say that the first dictate of reason is the kindling in us a love
and reverence for the Divine Majesty, to whom we owe both all that we
have and, all that we can ever hope for. In the next place, reason
directs us to keep our minds as free from passion and as cheerful as
we can, and that we should consider ourselves as bound by the ties of
good-nature and humanity to use our utmost endeavours to help forward
the happiness of all other persons; for there never was any man such
a morose and severe pursuer of virtue, such an enemy to pleasure, that
though he set hard rules for men to undergo, much pain, many watchings,
and other rigors, yet did not at the same time advise them to do all
they could in order to relieve and ease the miserable, and who did not
represent gentleness and good-nature as amiable dispositions.
And from thence they infer that if a man ought to advance the welfare
and comfort of the rest of mankind (there being no virtue more proper
and peculiar to our nature than to ease the miseries of others, to free
from trouble and anxiety, in furnishing them with the comforts of life,
in which pleasure consists) Nature much more vigorously leads them to
do all this for himself. A life of pleasure is either a real evil,
and in that case we ought not to assist others in their pursuit of it,
but, on the contrary, to keep them from it all we can, as from that
which is most hurtful and deadly; or if it is a good thing, so that
we not only may but ought to help others to it, why, then, ought not
a man to begin with himself? since no man can be more bound to look
after the good of another than after his own; for Nature cannot direct
us to be good and kind to others, and yet at the same time to be unmerciful
and cruel to ourselves. Thus as they define virtue to be living
according to Nature, so they imagine that Nature prompts all people
on to seek after pleasure as the end of all they do. They also
observe that in order to our supporting the pleasures of life, Nature
inclines us to enter into society; for there is no man so much raised
above the rest of mankind as to be the only favourite of Nature, who,
on the contrary, seems to have placed on a level all those that belong
to the same species. Upon this they infer that no man ought to
seek his own conveniences so eagerly as to prejudice others; and therefore
they think that not only all agreements between private persons ought
to be observed, but likewise that all those laws ought to be kept which
either a good prince has published in due form, or to which a people
that is neither oppressed with tyranny nor circumvented by fraud has
consented, for distributing those conveniences of life which afford
us all our pleasures.

“They think it is an evidence of true wisdom for a man to pursue
his own advantage as far as the laws allow it, they account it piety
to prefer the public good to one’s private concerns, but they
think it unjust for a man to seek for pleasure by snatching another
man’s pleasures from him; and, on the contrary, they think it
a sign of a gentle and good soul for a man to dispense with his own
advantage for the good of others, and that by this means a good man
finds as much pleasure one way as he parts with another; for as he may
expect the like from others when he may come to need it, so, if that
should fail him, yet the sense of a good action, and the reflections
that he makes on the love and gratitude of those whom he has so obliged,
gives the mind more pleasure than the body could have found in that
from which it had restrained itself. They are also persuaded that
God will make up the loss of those small pleasures with a vast and endless
joy, of which religion easily convinces a good soul.

“Thus, upon an inquiry into the whole matter, they reckon that
all our actions, and even all our virtues, terminate in pleasure, as
in our chief end and greatest happiness; and they call every motion
or state, either of body or mind, in which Nature teaches us to delight,
a pleasure. Thus they cautiously limit pleasure only to those
appetites to which Nature leads us; for they say that Nature leads us
only to those delights to which reason, as well as sense, carries us,
and by which we neither injure any other person nor lose the possession
of greater pleasures, and of such as draw no troubles after them.
But they look upon those delights which men by a foolish, though common,
mistake call pleasure, as if they could change as easily the nature
of things as the use of words, as things that greatly obstruct their
real happiness, instead of advancing it, because they so entirely possess
the minds of those that are once captivated by them with a false notion
of pleasure that there is no room left for pleasures of a truer or purer
kind.

“There are many things that in themselves have nothing that
is truly delightful; on the contrary, they have a good deal of bitterness
in them; and yet, from our perverse appetites after forbidden objects,
are not only ranked among the pleasures, but are made even the greatest
designs, of life. Among those who pursue these sophisticated pleasures
they reckon such as I mentioned before, who think themselves really
the better for having fine clothes; in which they think they are doubly
mistaken, both in the opinion they have of their clothes, and in that
they have of themselves. For if you consider the use of clothes,
why should a fine thread be thought better than a coarse one?
And yet these men, as if they had some real advantages beyond others,
and did not owe them wholly to their mistakes, look big, seem to fancy
themselves to be more valuable, and imagine that a respect is due to
them for the sake of a rich garment, to which they would not have pretended
if they had been more meanly clothed, and even resent it as an affront
if that respect is not paid them. It is also a great folly to
be taken with outward marks of respect, which signify nothing; for what
true or real pleasure can one man find in another’s standing bare
or making legs to him? Will the bending another man’s knees
give ease to yours? and will the head’s being bare cure the madness
of yours? And yet it is wonderful to see how this false notion
of pleasure bewitches many who delight themselves with the fancy of
their nobility, and are pleased with this conceit—that they are
descended from ancestors who have been held for some successions rich,
and who have had great possessions; for this is all that makes nobility
at present. Yet they do not think themselves a whit the less noble,
though their immediate parents have left none of this wealth to them,
or though they themselves have squandered it away. The Utopians
have no better opinion of those who are much taken with gems and precious
stones, and who account it a degree of happiness next to a divine one
if they can purchase one that is very extraordinary, especially if it
be of that sort of stones that is then in greatest request, for the
same sort is not at all times universally of the same value, nor will
men buy it unless it be dismounted and taken out of the gold.
The jeweller is then made to give good security, and required solemnly
to swear that the stone is true, that, by such an exact caution, a false
one might not be bought instead of a true; though, if you were to examine
it, your eye could find no difference between the counterfeit and that
which is true; so that they are all one to you, as much as if you were
blind. Or can it be thought that they who heap up a useless mass
of wealth, not for any use that it is to bring them, but merely to please
themselves with the contemplation of it, enjoy any true pleasure in
it? The delight they find is only a false shadow of joy.
Those are no better whose error is somewhat different from the former,
and who hide it out of their fear of losing it; for what other name
can fit the hiding it in the earth, or, rather, the restoring it to
it again, it being thus cut off from being useful either to its owner
or to the rest of mankind? And yet the owner, having hid it carefully,
is glad, because he thinks he is now sure of it. If it should
be stole, the owner, though he might live perhaps ten years after the
theft, of which he knew nothing, would find no difference between his
having or losing it, for both ways it was equally useless to him.

“Among those foolish pursuers of pleasure they reckon all that
delight in hunting, in fowling, or gaming, of whose madness they have
only heard, for they have no such things among them. But they
have asked us, ‘What sort of pleasure is it that men can find
in throwing the dice?’ (for if there were any pleasure in it,
they think the doing it so often should give one a surfeit of it); ‘and
what pleasure can one find in hearing the barking and howling of dogs,
which seem rather odious than pleasant sounds?’ Nor can
they comprehend the pleasure of seeing dogs run after a hare, more than
of seeing one dog run after another; for if the seeing them run is that
which gives the pleasure, you have the same entertainment to the eye
on both these occasions, since that is the same in both cases.
But if the pleasure lies in seeing the hare killed and torn by the dogs,
this ought rather to stir pity, that a weak, harmless, and fearful hare
should be devoured by strong, fierce, and cruel dogs. Therefore
all this business of hunting is, among the Utopians, turned over to
their butchers, and those, as has been already said, are all slaves,
and they look on hunting as one of the basest parts of a butcher’s
work, for they account it both more profitable and more decent to kill
those beasts that are more necessary and useful to mankind, whereas
the killing and tearing of so small and miserable an animal can only
attract the huntsman with a false show of pleasure, from which he can
reap but small advantage. They look on the desire of the bloodshed,
even of beasts, as a mark of a mind that is already corrupted with cruelty,
or that at least, by too frequent returns of so brutal a pleasure, must
degenerate into it.

“Thus though the rabble of mankind look upon these, and on
innumerable other things of the same nature, as pleasures, the Utopians,
on the contrary, observing that there is nothing in them truly pleasant,
conclude that they are not to be reckoned among pleasures; for though
these things may create some tickling in the senses (which seems to
be a true notion of pleasure), yet they imagine that this does not arise
from the thing itself, but from a depraved custom, which may so vitiate
a man’s taste that bitter things may pass for sweet, as women
with child think pitch or tallow taste sweeter than honey; but as a
man’s sense, when corrupted either by a disease or some ill habit,
does not change the nature of other things, so neither can it change
the nature of pleasure.

“They reckon up several sorts of pleasures, which they call
true ones; some belong to the body, and others to the mind. The
pleasures of the mind lie in knowledge, and in that delight which the
contemplation of truth carries with it; to which they add the joyful
reflections on a well-spent life, and the assured hopes of a future
happiness. They divide the pleasures of the body into two sorts—the
one is that which gives our senses some real delight, and is performed
either by recruiting Nature and supplying those parts which feed the
internal heat of life by eating and drinking, or when Nature is eased
of any surcharge that oppresses it, when we are relieved from sudden
pain, or that which arises from satisfying the appetite which Nature
has wisely given to lead us to the propagation of the species.
There is another kind of pleasure that arises neither from our receiving
what the body requires, nor its being relieved when overcharged, and
yet, by a secret unseen virtue, affects the senses, raises the passions,
and strikes the mind with generous impressions—this is, the pleasure
that arises from music. Another kind of bodily pleasure is that
which results from an undisturbed and vigorous constitution of body,
when life and active spirits seem to actuate every part. This
lively health, when entirely free from all mixture of pain, of itself
gives an inward pleasure, independent of all external objects of delight;
and though this pleasure does not so powerfully affect us, nor act so
strongly on the senses as some of the others, yet it may be esteemed
as the greatest of all pleasures; and almost all the Utopians reckon
it the foundation and basis of all the other joys of life, since this
alone makes the state of life easy and desirable, and when this is wanting,
a man is really capable of no other pleasure. They look upon freedom
from pain, if it does not rise from perfect health, to be a state of
stupidity rather than of pleasure. This subject has been very
narrowly canvassed among them, and it has been debated whether a firm
and entire health could be called a pleasure or not. Some have
thought that there was no pleasure but what was ‘excited’
by some sensible motion in the body. But this opinion has been
long ago excluded from among them; so that now they almost universally
agree that health is the greatest of all bodily pleasures; and that
as there is a pain in sickness which is as opposite in its nature to
pleasure as sickness itself is to health, so they hold that health is
accompanied with pleasure. And if any should say that sickness
is not really pain, but that it only carries pain along with it, they
look upon that as a fetch of subtlety that does not much alter the matter.
It is all one, in their opinion, whether it be said that health is in
itself a pleasure, or that it begets a pleasure, as fire gives heat,
so it be granted that all those whose health is entire have a true pleasure
in the enjoyment of it. And they reason thus:—‘What
is the pleasure of eating, but that a man’s health, which had
been weakened, does, with the assistance of food, drive away hunger,
and so recruiting itself, recovers its former vigour? And being
thus refreshed it finds a pleasure in that conflict; and if the conflict
is pleasure, the victory must yet breed a greater pleasure, except we
fancy that it becomes stupid as soon as it has obtained that which it
pursued, and so neither knows nor rejoices in its own welfare.’
If it is said that health cannot be felt, they absolutely deny it; for
what man is in health, that does not perceive it when he is awake?
Is there any man that is so dull and stupid as not to acknowledge that
he feels a delight in health? And what is delight but another
name for pleasure?

“But, of all pleasures, they esteem those to be most valuable
that lie in the mind, the chief of which arise out of true virtue and
the witness of a good conscience. They account health the chief
pleasure that belongs to the body; for they think that the pleasure
of eating and drinking, and all the other delights of sense, are only
so far desirable as they give or maintain health; but they are not pleasant
in themselves otherwise than as they resist those impressions that our
natural infirmities are still making upon us. For as a wise man
desires rather to avoid diseases than to take physic, and to be freed
from pain rather than to find ease by remedies, so it is more desirable
not to need this sort of pleasure than to be obliged to indulge it.
If any man imagines that there is a real happiness in these enjoyments,
he must then confess that he would be the happiest of all men if he
were to lead his life in perpetual hunger, thirst, and itching, and,
by consequence, in perpetual eating, drinking, and scratching himself;
which any one may easily see would be not only a base, but a miserable,
state of a life. These are, indeed, the lowest of pleasures, and
the least pure, for we can never relish them but when they are mixed
with the contrary pains. The pain of hunger must give us the pleasure
of eating, and here the pain out-balances the pleasure. And as
the pain is more vehement, so it lasts much longer; for as it begins
before the pleasure, so it does not cease but with the pleasure that
extinguishes it, and both expire together. They think, therefore,
none of those pleasures are to be valued any further than as they are
necessary; yet they rejoice in them, and with due gratitude acknowledge
the tenderness of the great Author of Nature, who has planted in us
appetites, by which those things that are necessary for our preservation
are likewise made pleasant to us. For how miserable a thing would
life be if those daily diseases of hunger and thirst were to be carried
off by such bitter drugs as we must use for those diseases that return
seldomer upon us! And thus these pleasant, as well as proper,
gifts of Nature maintain the strength and the sprightliness of our bodies.

“They also entertain themselves with the other delights let
in at their eyes, their ears, and their nostrils as the pleasant relishes
and seasoning of life, which Nature seems to have marked out peculiarly
for man, since no other sort of animals contemplates the figure and
beauty of the universe, nor is delighted with smells any further than
as they distinguish meats by them; nor do they apprehend the concords
or discords of sound. Yet, in all pleasures whatsoever, they take
care that a lesser joy does not hinder a greater, and that pleasure
may never breed pain, which they think always follows dishonest pleasures.
But they think it madness for a man to wear out the beauty of his face
or the force of his natural strength, to corrupt the sprightliness of
his body by sloth and laziness, or to waste it by fasting; that it is
madness to weaken the strength of his constitution and reject the other
delights of life, unless by renouncing his own satisfaction he can either
serve the public or promote the happiness of others, for which he expects
a greater recompense from God. So that they look on such a course
of life as the mark of a mind that is both cruel to itself and ungrateful
to the Author of Nature, as if we would not be beholden to Him for His
favours, and therefore rejects all His blessings; as one who should
afflict himself for the empty shadow of virtue, or for no better end
than to render himself capable of bearing those misfortunes which possibly
will never happen.

“This is their notion of virtue and of pleasure: they think
that no man’s reason can carry him to a truer idea of them unless
some discovery from heaven should inspire him with sublimer notions.
I have not now the leisure to examine whether they think right or wrong
in this matter; nor do I judge it necessary, for I have only undertaken
to give you an account of their constitution, but not to defend all
their principles. I am sure that whatever may be said of their
notions, there is not in the whole world either a better people or a
happier government. Their bodies are vigorous and lively; and
though they are but of a middle stature, and have neither the fruitfullest
soil nor the purest air in the world; yet they fortify themselves so
well, by their temperate course of life, against the unhealthiness of
their air, and by their industry they so cultivate their soil, that
there is nowhere to be seen a greater increase, both of corn and cattle,
nor are there anywhere healthier men and freer from diseases; for one
may there see reduced to practice not only all the art that the husbandman
employs in manuring and improving an ill soil, but whole woods plucked
up by the roots, and in other places new ones planted, where there were
none before. Their principal motive for this is the convenience
of carriage, that their timber may be either near their towns or growing
on the banks of the sea, or of some rivers, so as to be floated to them;
for it is a harder work to carry wood at any distance over land than
corn. The people are industrious, apt to learn, as well as cheerful
and pleasant, and none can endure more labour when it is necessary;
but, except in that case, they love their ease. They are unwearied
pursuers of knowledge; for when we had given them some hints of the
learning and discipline of the Greeks, concerning whom we only instructed
them (for we know that there was nothing among the Romans, except their
historians and their poets, that they would value much), it was strange
to see how eagerly they were set on learning that language: we began
to read a little of it to them, rather in compliance with their importunity
than out of any hopes of their reaping from it any great advantage:
but, after a very short trial, we found they made such progress, that
we saw our labour was like to be more successful than we could have
expected: they learned to write their characters and to pronounce their
language so exactly, had so quick an apprehension, they remembered it
so faithfully, and became so ready and correct in the use of it, that
it would have looked like a miracle if the greater part of those whom
we taught had not been men both of extraordinary capacity and of a fit
age for instruction: they were, for the greatest part, chosen from among
their learned men by their chief council, though some studied it of
their own accord. In three years’ time they became masters
of the whole language, so that they read the best of the Greek authors
very exactly. I am, indeed, apt to think that they learned that
language the more easily from its having some relation to their own.
I believe that they were a colony of the Greeks; for though their language
comes nearer the Persian, yet they retain many names, both for their
towns and magistrates, that are of Greek derivation. I happened
to carry a great many books with me, instead of merchandise, when I
sailed my fourth voyage; for I was so far from thinking of soon coming
back, that I rather thought never to have returned at all, and I gave
them all my books, among which were many of Plato’s and some of
Aristotle’s works: I had also Theophrastus on Plants, which, to
my great regret, was imperfect; for having laid it carelessly by, while
we were at sea, a monkey had seized upon it, and in many places torn
out the leaves. They have no books of grammar but Lascares, for
I did not carry Theodorus with me; nor have they any dictionaries but
Hesichius and Dioscerides. They esteem Plutarch highly, and were
much taken with Lucian’s wit and with his pleasant way of writing.
As for the poets, they have Aristophanes, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles
of Aldus’s edition; and for historians, Thucydides, Herodotus,
and Herodian. One of my companions, Thricius Apinatus, happened
to carry with him some of Hippocrates’s works and Galen’s
Microtechne, which they hold in great estimation; for though there is
no nation in the world that needs physic so little as they do, yet there
is not any that honours it so much; they reckon the knowledge of it
one of the pleasantest and most profitable parts of philosophy, by which,
as they search into the secrets of nature, so they not only find this
study highly agreeable, but think that such inquiries are very acceptable
to the Author of nature; and imagine, that as He, like the inventors
of curious engines amongst mankind, has exposed this great machine of
the universe to the view of the only creatures capable of contemplating
it, so an exact and curious observer, who admires His workmanship, is
much more acceptable to Him than one of the herd, who, like a beast
incapable of reason, looks on this glorious scene with the eyes of a
dull and unconcerned spectator.

“The minds of the Utopians, when fenced with a love for learning,
are very ingenious in discovering all such arts as are necessary to
carry it to perfection. Two things they owe to us, the manufacture
of paper and the art of printing; yet they are not so entirely indebted
to us for these discoveries but that a great part of the invention was
their own. We showed them some books printed by Aldus, we explained
to them the way of making paper and the mystery of printing; but, as
we had never practised these arts, we described them in a crude and
superficial manner. They seized the hints we gave them; and though
at first they could not arrive at perfection, yet by making many essays
they at last found out and corrected all their errors and conquered
every difficulty. Before this they only wrote on parchment, on
reeds, or on the barks of trees; but now they have established the manufactures
of paper and set up printing presses, so that, if they had but a good
number of Greek authors, they would be quickly supplied with many copies
of them: at present, though they have no more than those I have mentioned,
yet, by several impressions, they have multiplied them into many thousands.
If any man was to go among them that had some extraordinary talent,
or that by much travelling had observed the customs of many nations
(which made us to be so well received), he would receive a hearty welcome,
for they are very desirous to know the state of the whole world.
Very few go among them on the account of traffic; for what can a man
carry to them but iron, or gold, or silver? which merchants desire rather
to export than import to a strange country: and as for their exportation,
they think it better to manage that themselves than to leave it to foreigners,
for by this means, as they understand the state of the neighbouring
countries better, so they keep up the art of navigation which cannot
be maintained but by much practice.

OF THEIR SLAVES, AND OF THEIR MARRIAGES

“They do not make slaves of prisoners of war, except those
that are taken in battle, nor of the sons of their slaves, nor of those
of other nations: the slaves among them are only such as are condemned
to that state of life for the commission of some crime, or, which is
more common, such as their merchants find condemned to die in those
parts to which they trade, whom they sometimes redeem at low rates,
and in other places have them for nothing. They are kept at perpetual
labour, and are always chained, but with this difference, that their
own natives are treated much worse than others: they are considered
as more profligate than the rest, and since they could not be restrained
by the advantages of so excellent an education, are judged worthy of
harder usage. Another sort of slaves are the poor of the neighbouring
countries, who offer of their own accord to come and serve them: they
treat these better, and use them in all other respects as well as their
own countrymen, except their imposing more labour upon them, which is
no hard task to those that have been accustomed to it; and if any of
these have a mind to go back to their own country, which, indeed, falls
out but seldom, as they do not force them to stay, so they do not send
them away empty-handed.

“I have already told you with what care they look after their
sick, so that nothing is left undone that can contribute either to their
case or health; and for those who are taken with fixed and incurable
diseases, they use all possible ways to cherish them and to make their
lives as comfortable as possible. They visit them often and take
great pains to make their time pass off easily; but when any is taken
with a torturing and lingering pain, so that there is no hope either
of recovery or ease, the priests and magistrates come and exhort them,
that, since they are now unable to go on with the business of life,
are become a burden to themselves and to all about them, and they have
really out-lived themselves, they should no longer nourish such a rooted
distemper, but choose rather to die since they cannot live but in much
misery; being assured that if they thus deliver themselves from torture,
or are willing that others should do it, they shall be happy after death:
since, by their acting thus, they lose none of the pleasures, but only
the troubles of life, they think they behave not only reasonably but
in a manner consistent with religion and piety; because they follow
the advice given them by their priests, who are the expounders of the
will of God. Such as are wrought on by these persuasions either
starve themselves of their own accord, or take opium, and by that means
die without pain. But no man is forced on this way of ending his
life; and if they cannot be persuaded to it, this does not induce them
to fail in their attendance and care of them: but as they believe that
a voluntary death, when it is chosen upon such an authority, is very
honourable, so if any man takes away his own life without the approbation
of the priests and the senate, they give him none of the honours of
a decent funeral, but throw his body into a ditch.

“Their women are not married before eighteen nor their men
before two-and-twenty, and if any of them run into forbidden embraces
before marriage they are severely punished, and the privilege of marriage
is denied them unless they can obtain a special warrant from the Prince.
Such disorders cast a great reproach upon the master and mistress of
the family in which they happen, for it is supposed that they have failed
in their duty. The reason of punishing this so severely is, because
they think that if they were not strictly restrained from all vagrant
appetites, very few would engage in a state in which they venture the
quiet of their whole lives, by being confined to one person, and are
obliged to endure all the inconveniences with which it is accompanied.
In choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to us very
absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among them, and
is accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom. Before marriage
some grave matron presents the bride, naked, whether she is a virgin
or a widow, to the bridegroom, and after that some grave man presents
the bridegroom, naked, to the bride. We, indeed, both laughed
at this, and condemned it as very indecent. But they, on the other
hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations, who, if
they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are so cautious that they
will see every part of him, and take off both his saddle and all his
other tackle, that there may be no secret ulcer hid under any of them,
and that yet in the choice of a wife, on which depends the happiness
or unhappiness of the rest of his life, a man should venture upon trust,
and only see about a handsbreadth of the face, all the rest of the body
being covered, under which may lie hid what may be contagious as well
as loathsome. All men are not so wise as to choose a woman only
for her good qualities, and even wise men consider the body as that
which adds not a little to the mind, and it is certain there may be
some such deformity covered with clothes as may totally alienate a man
from his wife, when it is too late to part with her; if such a thing
is discovered after marriage a man has no remedy but patience; they,
therefore, think it is reasonable that there should be good provision
made against such mischievous frauds.

“There was so much the more reason for them to make a regulation
in this matter, because they are the only people of those parts that
neither allow of polygamy nor of divorces, except in the case of adultery
or insufferable perverseness, for in these cases the Senate dissolves
the marriage and grants the injured person leave to marry again; but
the guilty are made infamous and are never allowed the privilege of
a second marriage. None are suffered to put away their wives against
their wills, from any great calamity that may have fallen on their persons,
for they look on it as the height of cruelty and treachery to abandon
either of the married persons when they need most the tender care of
their consort, and that chiefly in the case of old age, which, as it
carries many diseases along with it, so it is a disease of itself.
But it frequently falls out that when a married couple do not well agree,
they, by mutual consent, separate, and find out other persons with whom
they hope they may live more happily; yet this is not done without obtaining
leave of the Senate, which never admits of a divorce but upon a strict
inquiry made, both by the senators and their wives, into the grounds
upon which it is desired, and even when they are satisfied concerning
the reasons of it they go on but slowly, for they imagine that too great
easiness in granting leave for new marriages would very much shake the
kindness of married people. They punish severely those that defile
the marriage bed; if both parties are married they are divorced, and
the injured persons may marry one another, or whom they please, but
the adulterer and the adulteress are condemned to slavery, yet if either
of the injured persons cannot shake off the love of the married person
they may live with them still in that state, but they must follow them
to that labour to which the slaves are condemned, and sometimes the
repentance of the condemned, together with the unshaken kindness of
the innocent and injured person, has prevailed so far with the Prince
that he has taken off the sentence; but those that relapse after they
are once pardoned are punished with death.

“Their law does not determine the punishment for other crimes,
but that is left to the Senate, to temper it according to the circumstances
of the fact. Husbands have power to correct their wives and parents
to chastise their children, unless the fault is so great that a public
punishment is thought necessary for striking terror into others.
For the most part slavery is the punishment even of the greatest crimes,
for as that is no less terrible to the criminals themselves than death,
so they think the preserving them in a state of servitude is more for
the interest of the commonwealth than killing them, since, as their
labour is a greater benefit to the public than their death could be,
so the sight of their misery is a more lasting terror to other men than
that which would be given by their death. If their slaves rebel,
and will not bear their yoke and submit to the labour that is enjoined
them, they are treated as wild beasts that cannot be kept in order,
neither by a prison nor by their chains, and are at last put to death.
But those who bear their punishment patiently, and are so much wrought
on by that pressure that lies so hard on them, that it appears they
are really more troubled for the crimes they have committed than for
the miseries they suffer, are not out of hope, but that, at last, either
the Prince will, by his prerogative, or the people, by their intercession,
restore them again to their liberty, or, at least, very much mitigate
their slavery. He that tempts a married woman to adultery is no
less severely punished than he that commits it, for they believe that
a deliberate design to commit a crime is equal to the fact itself, since
its not taking effect does not make the person that miscarried in his
attempt at all the less guilty.

“They take great pleasure in fools, and as it is thought a
base and unbecoming thing to use them ill, so they do not think it amiss
for people to divert themselves with their folly; and, in their opinion,
this is a great advantage to the fools themselves; for if men were so
sullen and severe as not at all to please themselves with their ridiculous
behaviour and foolish sayings, which is all that they can do to recommend
themselves to others, it could not be expected that they would be so
well provided for nor so tenderly used as they must otherwise be.
If any man should reproach another for his being misshaped or imperfect
in any part of his body, it would not at all be thought a reflection
on the person so treated, but it would be accounted scandalous in him
that had upbraided another with what he could not help. It is
thought a sign of a sluggish and sordid mind not to preserve carefully
one’s natural beauty; but it is likewise infamous among them to
use paint. They all see that no beauty recommends a wife so much
to her husband as the probity of her life and her obedience; for as
some few are caught and held only by beauty, so all are attracted by
the other excellences which charm all the world.

“As they fright men from committing crimes by punishments,
so they invite them to the love of virtue by public honours; therefore
they erect statues to the memories of such worthy men as have deserved
well of their country, and set these in their market-places, both to
perpetuate the remembrance of their actions and to be an incitement
to their posterity to follow their example.

“If any man aspires to any office he is sure never to compass
it. They all live easily together, for none of the magistrates
are either insolent or cruel to the people; they affect rather to be
called fathers, and, by being really so, they well deserve the name;
and the people pay them all the marks of honour the more freely because
none are exacted from them. The Prince himself has no distinction,
either of garments or of a crown; but is only distinguished by a sheaf
of corn carried before him; as the High Priest is also known by his
being preceded by a person carrying a wax light.

“They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that
they need not many. They very much condemn other nations whose
laws, together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes;
for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body
of laws that are both of such a bulk, and so dark as not to be read
and understood by every one of the subjects.

“They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as
a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest
the laws, and, therefore, they think it is much better that every man
should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as in other places
the client trusts it to a counsellor; by this means they both cut off
many delays and find out truth more certainly; for after the parties
have laid open the merits of the cause, without those artifices which
lawyers are apt to suggest, the judge examines the whole matter, and
supports the simplicity of such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise
crafty men would be sure to run down; and thus they avoid those evils
which appear very remarkably among all those nations that labour under
a vast load of laws. Every one of them is skilled in their law;
for, as it is a very short study, so the plainest meaning of which words
are capable is always the sense of their laws; and they argue thus:
all laws are promulgated for this end, that every man may know his duty;
and, therefore, the plainest and most obvious sense of the words is
that which ought to be put upon them, since a more refined exposition
cannot be easily comprehended, and would only serve to make the laws
become useless to the greater part of mankind, and especially to those
who need most the direction of them; for it is all one not to make a
law at all or to couch it in such terms that, without a quick apprehension
and much study, a man cannot find out the true meaning of it, since
the generality of mankind are both so dull, and so much employed in
their several trades, that they have neither the leisure nor the capacity
requisite for such an inquiry.

“Some of their neighbours, who are masters of their own liberties
(having long ago, by the assistance of the Utopians, shaken off the
yoke of tyranny, and being much taken with those virtues which they
observe among them), have come to desire that they would send magistrates
to govern them, some changing them every year, and others every five
years; at the end of their government they bring them back to Utopia,
with great expressions of honour and esteem, and carry away others to
govern in their stead. In this they seem to have fallen upon a
very good expedient for their own happiness and safety; for since the
good or ill condition of a nation depends so much upon their magistrates,
they could not have made a better choice than by pitching on men whom
no advantages can bias; for wealth is of no use to them, since they
must so soon go back to their own country, and they, being strangers
among them, are not engaged in any of their heats or animosities; and
it is certain that when public judicatories are swayed, either by avarice
or partial affections, there must follow a dissolution of justice, the
chief sinew of society.

“The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates
from them Neighbours; but those to whom they have been of more particular
service, Friends; and as all other nations are perpetually either making
leagues or breaking them, they never enter into an alliance with any
state. They think leagues are useless things, and believe that
if the common ties of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of
promises will have no great effect; and they are the more confirmed
in this by what they see among the nations round about them, who are
no strict observers of leagues and treaties. We know how religiously
they are observed in Europe, more particularly where the Christian doctrine
is received, among whom they are sacred and inviolable! which is partly
owing to the justice and goodness of the princes themselves, and partly
to the reverence they pay to the popes, who, as they are the most religious
observers of their own promises, so they exhort all other princes to
perform theirs, and, when fainter methods do not prevail, they compel
them to it by the severity of the pastoral censure, and think that it
would be the most indecent thing possible if men who are particularly
distinguished by the title of ‘The Faithful’ should not
religiously keep the faith of their treaties. But in that new-found
world, which is not more distant from us in situation than the people
are in their manners and course of life, there is no trusting to leagues,
even though they were made with all the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies;
on the contrary, they are on this account the sooner broken, some slight
pretence being found in the words of the treaties, which are purposely
couched in such ambiguous terms that they can never be so strictly bound
but they will always find some loophole to escape at, and thus they
break both their leagues and their faith; and this is done with such
impudence, that those very men who value themselves on having suggested
these expedients to their princes would, with a haughty scorn, declaim
against such craft; or, to speak plainer, such fraud and deceit, if
they found private men make use of it in their bargains, and would readily
say that they deserved to be hanged.

“By this means it is that all sort of justice passes in the
world for a low-spirited and vulgar virtue, far below the dignity of
royal greatness—or at least there are set up two sorts of justice;
the one is mean and creeps on the ground, and, therefore, becomes none
but the lower part of mankind, and so must be kept in severely by many
restraints, that it may not break out beyond the bounds that are set
to it; the other is the peculiar virtue of princes, which, as it is
more majestic than that which becomes the rabble, so takes a freer compass,
and thus lawful and unlawful are only measured by pleasure and interest.
These practices of the princes that lie about Utopia, who make so little
account of their faith, seem to be the reasons that determine them to
engage in no confederacy. Perhaps they would change their mind
if they lived among us; but yet, though treaties were more religiously
observed, they would still dislike the custom of making them, since
the world has taken up a false maxim upon it, as if there were no tie
of nature uniting one nation to another, only separated perhaps by a
mountain or a river, and that all were born in a state of hostility,
and so might lawfully do all that mischief to their neighbours against
which there is no provision made by treaties; and that when treaties
are made they do not cut off the enmity or restrain the licence of preying
upon each other, if, by the unskilfulness of wording them, there are
not effectual provisoes made against them; they, on the other hand,
judge that no man is to be esteemed our enemy that has never injured
us, and that the partnership of human nature is instead of a league;
and that kindness and good nature unite men more effectually and with
greater strength than any agreements whatsoever, since thereby the engagements
of men’s hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of
words.

OF THEIR MILITARY DISCIPLINE

They detest war as a very brutal thing, and which, to the reproach
of human nature, is more practised by men than by any sort of beasts.
They, in opposition to the sentiments of almost all other nations, think
that there is nothing more inglorious than that glory that is gained
by war; and therefore, though they accustom themselves daily to military
exercises and the discipline of war, in which not only their men, but
their women likewise, are trained up, that, in cases of necessity, they
may not be quite useless, yet they do not rashly engage in war, unless
it be either to defend themselves or their friends from any unjust aggressors,
or, out of good nature or in compassion, assist an oppressed nation
in shaking off the yoke of tyranny. They, indeed, help their friends
not only in defensive but also in offensive wars; but they never do
that unless they had been consulted before the breach was made, and,
being satisfied with the grounds on which they went, they had found
that all demands of reparation were rejected, so that a war was unavoidable.
This they think to be not only just when one neighbour makes an inroad
on another by public order, and carries away the spoils, but when the
merchants of one country are oppressed in another, either under pretence
of some unjust laws, or by the perverse wresting of good ones.
This they count a juster cause of war than the other, because those
injuries are done under some colour of laws. This was the only
ground of that war in which they engaged with the Nephelogetes against
the Aleopolitanes, a little before our time; for the merchants of the
former having, as they thought, met with great injustice among the latter,
which (whether it was in itself right or wrong) drew on a terrible war,
in which many of their neighbours were engaged; and their keenness in
carrying it on being supported by their strength in maintaining it,
it not only shook some very flourishing states and very much afflicted
others, but, after a series of much mischief ended in the entire conquest
and slavery of the Aleopolitanes, who, though before the war they were
in all respects much superior to the Nephelogetes, were yet subdued;
but, though the Utopians had assisted them in the war, yet they pretended
to no share of the spoil.

“But, though they so vigorously assist their friends in obtaining
reparation for the injuries they have received in affairs of this nature,
yet, if any such frauds were committed against themselves, provided
no violence was done to their persons, they would only, on their being
refused satisfaction, forbear trading with such a people. This
is not because they consider their neighbours more than their own citizens;
but, since their neighbours trade every one upon his own stock, fraud
is a more sensible injury to them than it is to the Utopians, among
whom the public, in such a case, only suffers, as they expect no thing
in return for the merchandise they export but that in which they so
much abound, and is of little use to them, the loss does not much affect
them. They think, therefore, it would be too severe to revenge
a loss attended with so little inconvenience, either to their lives
or their subsistence, with the death of many persons; but if any of
their people are either killed or wounded wrongfully, whether it be
done by public authority, or only by private men, as soon as they hear
of it they send ambassadors, and demand that the guilty persons may
be delivered up to them, and if that is denied, they declare war; but
if it be complied with, the offenders are condemned either to death
or slavery.

“They would be both troubled and ashamed of a bloody victory
over their enemies; and think it would be as foolish a purchase as to
buy the most valuable goods at too high a rate. And in no victory
do they glory so much as in that which is gained by dexterity and good
conduct without bloodshed. In such cases they appoint public triumphs,
and erect trophies to the honour of those who have succeeded; for then
do they reckon that a man acts suitably to his nature, when he conquers
his enemy in such a way as that no other creature but a man could be
capable of, and that is by the strength of his understanding.
Bears, lions, boars, wolves, and dogs, and all other animals, employ
their bodily force one against another, in which, as many of them are
superior to men, both in strength and fierceness, so they are all subdued
by his reason and understanding.

“The only design of the Utopians in war is to obtain that by
force which, if it had been granted them in time, would have prevented
the war; or, if that cannot be done, to take so severe a revenge on
those that have injured them that they may be terrified from doing the
like for the time to come. By these ends they measure all their
designs, and manage them so, that it is visible that the appetite of
fame or vainglory does not work so much on there as a just care of their
own security.

“As soon as they declare war, they take care to have a great
many schedules, that are sealed with their common seal, affixed in the
most conspicuous places of their enemies’ country. This
is carried secretly, and done in many places all at once. In these
they promise great rewards to such as shall kill the prince, and lesser
in proportion to such as shall kill any other persons who are those
on whom, next to the prince himself, they cast the chief balance of
the war. And they double the sum to him that, instead of killing
the person so marked out, shall take him alive, and put him in their
hands. They offer not only indemnity, but rewards, to such of
the persons themselves that are so marked, if they will act against
their countrymen. By this means those that are named in their
schedules become not only distrustful of their fellow-citizens, but
are jealous of one another, and are much distracted by fear and danger;
for it has often fallen out that many of them, and even the prince himself,
have been betrayed, by those in whom they have trusted most; for the
rewards that the Utopians offer are so immeasurably great, that there
is no sort of crime to which men cannot be drawn by them. They
consider the risk that those run who undertake such services, and offer
a recompense proportioned to the danger—not only a vast deal of
gold, but great revenues in lands, that lie among other nations that
are their friends, where they may go and enjoy them very securely; and
they observe the promises they make of their kind most religiously.
They very much approve of this way of corrupting their enemies, though
it appears to others to be base and cruel; but they look on it as a
wise course, to make an end of what would be otherwise a long war, without
so much as hazarding one battle to decide it. They think it likewise
an act of mercy and love to mankind to prevent the great slaughter of
those that must otherwise be killed in the progress of the war, both
on their own side and on that of their enemies, by the death of a few
that are most guilty; and that in so doing they are kind even to their
enemies, and pity them no less than their own people, as knowing that
the greater part of them do not engage in the war of their own accord,
but are driven into it by the passions of their prince.

“If this method does not succeed with them, then they sow seeds
of contention among their enemies, and animate the prince’s brother,
or some of the nobility, to aspire to the crown. If they cannot
disunite them by domestic broils, then they engage their neighbours
against them, and make them set on foot some old pretensions, which
are never wanting to princes when they have occasion for them.
These they plentifully supply with money, though but very sparingly
with any auxiliary troops; for they are so tender of their own people
that they would not willingly exchange one of them, even with the prince
of their enemies’ country.

“But as they keep their gold and silver only for such an occasion,
so, when that offers itself, they easily part with it; since it would
be no convenience to them, though they should reserve nothing of it
to themselves. For besides the wealth that they have among them
at home, they have a vast treasure abroad; many nations round about
them being deep in their debt: so that they hire soldiers from all places
for carrying on their wars; but chiefly from the Zapolets, who live
five hundred miles east of Utopia. They are a rude, wild, and
fierce nation, who delight in the woods and rocks, among which they
were born and bred up. They are hardened both against heat, cold,
and labour, and know nothing of the delicacies of life. They do
not apply themselves to agriculture, nor do they care either for their
houses or their clothes: cattle is all that they look after; and for
the greatest part they live either by hunting or upon rapine; and are
made, as it were, only for war. They watch all opportunities of
engaging in it, and very readily embrace such as are offered them.
Great numbers of them will frequently go out, and offer themselves for
a very low pay, to serve any that will employ them: they know none of
the arts of life, but those that lead to the taking it away; they serve
those that hire them, both with much courage and great fidelity; but
will not engage to serve for any determined time, and agree upon such
terms, that the next day they may go over to the enemies of those whom
they serve if they offer them a greater encouragement; and will, perhaps,
return to them the day after that upon a higher advance of their pay.
There are few wars in which they make not a considerable part of the
armies of both sides: so it often falls out that they who are related,
and were hired in the same country, and so have lived long and familiarly
together, forgetting both their relations and former friendship, kill
one another upon no other consideration than that of being hired to
it for a little money by princes of different interests; and such a
regard have they for money that they are easily wrought on by the difference
of one penny a day to change sides. So entirely does their avarice
influence them; and yet this money, which they value so highly, is of
little use to them; for what they purchase thus with their blood they
quickly waste on luxury, which among them is but of a poor and miserable
form.

“This nation serves the Utopians against all people whatsoever,
for they pay higher than any other. The Utopians hold this for
a maxim, that as they seek out the best sort of men for their own use
at home, so they make use of this worst sort of men for the consumption
of war; and therefore they hire them with the offers of vast rewards
to expose themselves to all sorts of hazards, out of which the greater
part never returns to claim their promises; yet they make them good
most religiously to such as escape. This animates them to adventure
again, whenever there is occasion for it; for the Utopians are not at
all troubled how many of these happen to be killed, and reckon it a
service done to mankind if they could be a means to deliver the world
from such a lewd and vicious sort of people, that seem to have run together,
as to the drain of human nature. Next to these, they are served
in their wars with those upon whose account they undertake them, and
with the auxiliary troops of their other friends, to whom they join
a few of their own people, and send some man of eminent and approved
virtue to command in chief. There are two sent with him, who,
during his command, are but private men, but the first is to succeed
him if he should happen to be either killed or taken; and, in case of
the like misfortune to him, the third comes in his place; and thus they
provide against all events, that such accidents as may befall their
generals may not endanger their armies. When they draw out troops
of their own people, they take such out of every city as freely offer
themselves, for none are forced to go against their wills, since they
think that if any man is pressed that wants courage, he will not only
act faintly, but by his cowardice dishearten others. But if an
invasion is made on their country, they make use of such men, if they
have good bodies, though they are not brave; and either put them aboard
their ships, or place them on the walls of their towns, that being so
posted, they may find no opportunity of flying away; and thus either
shame, the heat of action, or the impossibility of flying, bears down
their cowardice; they often make a virtue of necessity, and behave themselves
well, because nothing else is left them. But as they force no
man to go into any foreign war against his will, so they do not hinder
those women who are willing to go along with their husbands; on the
contrary, they encourage and praise them, and they stand often next
their husbands in the front of the army. They also place together
those who are related, parents, and children, kindred, and those that
are mutually allied, near one another; that those whom nature has inspired
with the greatest zeal for assisting one another may be the nearest
and readiest to do it; and it is matter of great reproach if husband
or wife survive one another, or if a child survives his parent, and
therefore when they come to be engaged in action, they continue to fight
to the last man, if their enemies stand before them: and as they use
all prudent methods to avoid the endangering their own men, and if it
is possible let all the action and danger fall upon the troops that
they hire, so if it becomes necessary for themselves to engage, they
then charge with as much courage as they avoided it before with prudence:
nor is it a fierce charge at first, but it increases by degrees; and
as they continue in action, they grow more obstinate, and press harder
upon the enemy, insomuch that they will much sooner die than give ground;
for the certainty that their children will be well looked after when
they are dead frees them from all that anxiety concerning them which
often masters men of great courage; and thus they are animated by a
noble and invincible resolution. Their skill in military affairs
increases their courage: and the wise sentiments which, according to
the laws of their country, are instilled into them in their education,
give additional vigour to their minds: for as they do not undervalue
life so as prodigally to throw it away, they are not so indecently fond
of it as to preserve it by base and unbecoming methods. In the
greatest heat of action the bravest of their youth, who have devoted
themselves to that service, single out the general of their enemies,
set on him either openly or by ambuscade; pursue him everywhere, and
when spent and wearied out, are relieved by others, who never give over
the pursuit, either attacking him with close weapons when they can get
near him, or with those which wound at a distance, when others get in
between them. So that, unless he secures himself by flight, they
seldom fail at last to kill or to take him prisoner. When they
have obtained a victory, they kill as few as possible, and are much
more bent on taking many prisoners than on killing those that fly before
them. Nor do they ever let their men so loose in the pursuit of
their enemies as not to retain an entire body still in order; so that
if they have been forced to engage the last of their battalions before
they could gain the day, they will rather let their enemies all escape
than pursue them when their own army is in disorder; remembering well
what has often fallen out to themselves, that when the main body of
their army has been quite defeated and broken, when their enemies, imagining
the victory obtained, have let themselves loose into an irregular pursuit,
a few of them that lay for a reserve, waiting a fit opportunity, have
fallen on them in their chase, and when straggling in disorder, and
apprehensive of no danger, but counting the day their own, have turned
the whole action, and, wresting out of their hands a victory that seemed
certain and undoubted, while the vanquished have suddenly become victorious.

“It is hard to tell whether they are more dexterous in laying
or avoiding ambushes. They sometimes seem to fly when it is far
from their thoughts; and when they intend to give ground, they do it
so that it is very hard to find out their design. If they see
they are ill posted, or are like to be overpowered by numbers, they
then either march off in the night with great silence, or by some stratagem
delude their enemies. If they retire in the day-time, they do
it in such order that it is no less dangerous to fall upon them in a
retreat than in a march. They fortify their camps with a deep
and large trench; and throw up the earth that is dug out of it for a
wall; nor do they employ only their slaves in this, but the whole army
works at it, except those that are then upon the guard; so that when
so many hands are at work, a great line and a strong fortification is
finished in so short a time that it is scarce credible. Their
armour is very strong for defence, and yet is not so heavy as to make
them uneasy in their marches; they can even swim with it. All
that are trained up to war practise swimming. Both horse and foot
make great use of arrows, and are very expert. They have no swords,
but fight with a pole-axe that is both sharp and heavy, by which they
thrust or strike down an enemy. They are very good at finding
out warlike machines, and disguise them so well that the enemy does
not perceive them till he feels the use of them; so that he cannot prepare
such a defence as would render them useless; the chief consideration
had in the making them is that they may be easily carried and managed.

“If they agree to a truce, they observe it so religiously that
no provocations will make them break it. They never lay their
enemies’ country waste nor burn their corn, and even in their
marches they take all possible care that neither horse nor foot may
tread it down, for they do not know but that they may have use for it
themselves. They hurt no man whom they find disarmed, unless he
is a spy. When a town is surrendered to them, they take it into
their protection; and when they carry a place by storm they never plunder
it, but put those only to the sword that oppose the rendering of it
up, and make the rest of the garrison slaves, but for the other inhabitants,
they do them no hurt; and if any of them had advised a surrender, they
give them good rewards out of the estates of those that they condemn,
and distribute the rest among their auxiliary troops, but they themselves
take no share of the spoil.

“When a war is ended, they do not oblige their friends to reimburse
their expenses; but they obtain them of the conquered, either in money,
which they keep for the next occasion, or in lands, out of which a constant
revenue is to be paid them; by many increases the revenue which they
draw out from several countries on such occasions is now risen to above
700,000 ducats a year. They send some of their own people to receive
these revenues, who have orders to live magnificently and like princes,
by which means they consume much of it upon the place; and either bring
over the rest to Utopia or lend it to that nation in which it lies.
This they most commonly do, unless some great occasion, which falls
out but very seldom, should oblige them to call for it all. It
is out of these lands that they assign rewards to such as they encourage
to adventure on desperate attempts. If any prince that engages
in war with them is making preparations for invading their country,
they prevent him, and make his country the seat of the war; for they
do not willingly suffer any war to break in upon their island; and if
that should happen, they would only defend themselves by their own people;
but would not call for auxiliary troops to their assistance.

OF THE RELIGIONS OF THE UTOPIANS

“There are several sorts of religions, not only in different
parts of the island, but even in every town; some worshipping the sun,
others the moon or one of the planets. Some worship such men as
have been eminent in former times for virtue or glory, not only as ordinary
deities, but as the supreme god. Yet the greater and wiser sort
of them worship none of these, but adore one eternal, invisible, infinite,
and incomprehensible Deity; as a Being that is far above all our apprehensions,
that is spread over the whole universe, not by His bulk, but by His
power and virtue; Him they call the Father of All, and acknowledge that
the beginnings, the increase, the progress, the vicissitudes, and the
end of all things come only from Him; nor do they offer divine honours
to any but to Him alone. And, indeed, though they differ concerning
other things, yet all agree in this: that they think there is one Supreme
Being that made and governs the world, whom they call, in the language
of their country, Mithras. They differ in this: that one thinks
the god whom he worships is this Supreme Being, and another thinks that
his idol is that god; but they all agree in one principle, that whoever
is this Supreme Being, He is also that great essence to whose glory
and majesty all honours are ascribed by the consent of all nations.

“By degrees they fall off from the various superstitions that
are among them, and grow up to that one religion that is the best and
most in request; and there is no doubt to be made, but that all the
others had vanished long ago, if some of those who advised them to lay
aside their superstitions had not met with some unhappy accidents, which,
being considered as inflicted by heaven, made them afraid that the god
whose worship had like to have been abandoned had interposed and revenged
themselves on those who despised their authority.

“After they had heard from us an account of the doctrine, the
course of life, and the miracles of Christ, and of the wonderful constancy
of so many martyrs, whose blood, so willingly offered up by them, was
the chief occasion of spreading their religion over a vast number of
nations, it is not to be imagined how inclined they were to receive
it. I shall not determine whether this proceeded from any secret
inspiration of God, or whether it was because it seemed so favourable
to that community of goods, which is an opinion so particular as well
as so dear to them; since they perceived that Christ and His followers
lived by that rule, and that it was still kept up in some communities
among the sincerest sort of Christians. From whichsoever of these
motives it might be, true it is, that many of them came over to our
religion, and were initiated into it by baptism. But as two of
our number were dead, so none of the four that survived were in priests’
orders, we, therefore, could only baptise them, so that, to our great
regret, they could not partake of the other sacraments, that can only
be administered by priests, but they are instructed concerning them
and long most vehemently for them. They have had great disputes
among themselves, whether one chosen by them to be a priest would not
be thereby qualified to do all the things that belong to that character,
even though he had no authority derived from the Pope, and they seemed
to be resolved to choose some for that employment, but they had not
done it when I left them.

“Those among them that have not received our religion do not
fright any from it, and use none ill that goes over to it, so that all
the while I was there one man was only punished on this occasion.
He being newly baptised did, notwithstanding all that we could say to
the contrary, dispute publicly concerning the Christian religion, with
more zeal than discretion, and with so much heat, that he not only preferred
our worship to theirs, but condemned all their rites as profane, and
cried out against all that adhered to them as impious and sacrilegious
persons, that were to be damned to everlasting burnings. Upon
his having frequently preached in this manner he was seized, and after
trial he was condemned to banishment, not for having disparaged their
religion, but for his inflaming the people to sedition; for this is
one of their most ancient laws, that no man ought to be punished for
his religion. At the first constitution of their government, Utopus
having understood that before his coming among them the old inhabitants
had been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they
were so divided among themselves, that he found it an easy thing to
conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces against him, every
different party in religion fought by themselves. After he had
subdued them he made a law that every man might be of what religion
he pleased, and might endeavour to draw others to it by the force of
argument and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against
those of other opinions; but that he ought to use no other force but
that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it reproaches nor violence;
and such as did otherwise were to be condemned to banishment or slavery.

“This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the public
peace, which he saw suffered much by daily contentions and irreconcilable
heats, but because he thought the interest of religion itself required
it. He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly; and seemed
to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come
from God, who might inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased
with this variety; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for
any man to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what did
not appear to him to be true. And supposing that only one religion
was really true, and the rest false, he imagined that the native force
of truth would at last break forth and shine bright, if supported only
by the strength of argument, and attended to with a gentle and unprejudiced
mind; while, on the other hand, if such debates were carried on with
violence and tumults, as the most wicked are always the most obstinate,
so the best and most holy religion might be choked with superstition,
as corn is with briars and thorns; he therefore left men wholly to their
liberty, that they might be free to believe as they should see cause;
only he made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate
from the dignity of human nature, as to think that our souls died with
our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise
overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was
a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life;
and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be
counted men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon
it no better than a beast’s: thus they are far from looking on
such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered
commonwealth; since a man of such principles must needs, as oft as he
dares do it, despise all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt
to be made, that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends
nothing after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws
of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may
satisfy his appetites. They never raise any that hold these maxims,
either to honours or offices, nor employ them in any public trust, but
despise them, as men of base and sordid minds. Yet they do not
punish them, because they lay this down as a maxim, that a man cannot
make himself believe anything he pleases; nor do they drive any to dissemble
their thoughts by threatenings, so that men are not tempted to lie or
disguise their opinions; which being a sort of fraud, is abhorred by
the Utopians: they take care indeed to prevent their disputing in defence
of these opinions, especially before the common people: but they suffer,
and even encourage them to dispute concerning them in private with their
priest, and other grave men, being confident that they will be cured
of those mad opinions by having reason laid before them. There
are many among them that run far to the other extreme, though it is
neither thought an ill nor unreasonable opinion, and therefore is not
at all discouraged. They think that the souls of beasts are immortal,
though far inferior to the dignity of the human soul, and not capable
of so great a happiness. They are almost all of them very firmly
persuaded that good men will be infinitely happy in another state: so
that though they are compassionate to all that are sick, yet they lament
no man’s death, except they see him loath to part with life; for
they look on this as a very ill presage, as if the soul, conscious to
itself of guilt, and quite hopeless, was afraid to leave the body, from
some secret hints of approaching misery. They think that such
a man’s appearance before God cannot be acceptable to Him, who
being called on, does not go out cheerfully, but is backward and unwilling,
and is as it were dragged to it. They are struck with horror when
they see any die in this manner, and carry them out in silence and with
sorrow, and praying God that He would be merciful to the errors of the
departed soul, they lay the body in the ground: but when any die cheerfully,
and full of hope, they do not mourn for them, but sing hymns when they
carry out their bodies, and commending their souls very earnestly to
God: their whole behaviour is then rather grave than sad, they burn
the body, and set up a pillar where the pile was made, with an inscription
to the honour of the deceased. When they come from the funeral,
they discourse of his good life, and worthy actions, but speak of nothing
oftener and with more pleasure than of his serenity at the hour of death.
They think such respect paid to the memory of good men is both the greatest
incitement to engage others to follow their example, and the most acceptable
worship that can be offered them; for they believe that though by the
imperfection of human sight they are invisible to us, yet they are present
among us, and hear those discourses that pass concerning themselves.
They believe it inconsistent with the happiness of departed souls not
to be at liberty to be where they will: and do not imagine them capable
of the ingratitude of not desiring to see those friends with whom they
lived on earth in the strictest bonds of love and kindness: besides,
they are persuaded that good men, after death, have these affections;
and all other good dispositions increased rather than diminished, and
therefore conclude that they are still among the living, and observe
all they say or do. From hence they engage in all their affairs
with the greater confidence of success, as trusting to their protection;
while this opinion of the presence of their ancestors is a restraint
that prevents their engaging in ill designs.

“They despise and laugh at auguries, and the other vain and
superstitious ways of divination, so much observed among other nations;
but have great reverence for such miracles as cannot flow from any of
the powers of nature, and look on them as effects and indications of
the presence of the Supreme Being, of which they say many instances
have occurred among them; and that sometimes their public prayers, which
upon great and dangerous occasions they have solemnly put up to God,
with assured confidence of being heard, have been answered in a miraculous
manner.

“They think the contemplating God in His works, and the adoring
Him for them, is a very acceptable piece of worship to Him.

“There are many among them that upon a motive of religion neglect
learning, and apply themselves to no sort of study; nor do they allow
themselves any leisure time, but are perpetually employed, believing
that by the good things that a man does he secures to himself that happiness
that comes after death. Some of these visit the sick; others mend
highways, cleanse ditches, repair bridges, or dig turf, gravel, or stone.
Others fell and cleave timber, and bring wood, corn, and other necessaries,
on carts, into their towns; nor do these only serve the public, but
they serve even private men, more than the slaves themselves do: for
if there is anywhere a rough, hard, and sordid piece of work to be done,
from which many are frightened by the labour and loathsomeness of it,
if not the despair of accomplishing it, they cheerfully, and of their
own accord, take that to their share; and by that means, as they ease
others very much, so they afflict themselves, and spend their whole
life in hard labour: and yet they do not value themselves upon this,
nor lessen other people’s credit to raise their own; but by their
stooping to such servile employments they are so far from being despised,
that they are so much the more esteemed by the whole nation.

“Of these there are two sorts: some live unmarried and chaste,
and abstain from eating any sort of flesh; and thus weaning themselves
from all the pleasures of the present life, which they account hurtful,
they pursue, even by the hardest and painfullest methods possible, that
blessedness which they hope for hereafter; and the nearer they approach
to it, they are the more cheerful and earnest in their endeavours after
it. Another sort of them is less willing to put themselves to
much toil, and therefore prefer a married state to a single one; and
as they do not deny themselves the pleasure of it, so they think the
begetting of children is a debt which they owe to human nature, and
to their country; nor do they avoid any pleasure that does not hinder
labour; and therefore eat flesh so much the more willingly, as they
find that by this means they are the more able to work: the Utopians
look upon these as the wiser sect, but they esteem the others as the
most holy. They would indeed laugh at any man who, from the principles
of reason, would prefer an unmarried state to a married, or a life of
labour to an easy life: but they reverence and admire such as do it
from the motives of religion. There is nothing in which they are
more cautious than in giving their opinion positively concerning any
sort of religion. The men that lead those severe lives are called
in the language of their country Brutheskas, which answers to those
we call Religious Orders.

“Their priests are men of eminent piety, and therefore they
are but few, for there are only thirteen in every town, one for every
temple; but when they go to war, seven of these go out with their forces,
and seven others are chosen to supply their room in their absence; but
these enter again upon their employments when they return; and those
who served in their absence, attend upon the high priest, till vacancies
fall by death; for there is one set over the rest. They are chosen
by the people as the other magistrates are, by suffrages given in secret,
for preventing of factions: and when they are chosen, they are consecrated
by the college of priests. The care of all sacred things, the
worship of God, and an inspection into the manners of the people, are
committed to them. It is a reproach to a man to be sent for by
any of them, or for them to speak to him in secret, for that always
gives some suspicion: all that is incumbent on them is only to exhort
and admonish the people; for the power of correcting and punishing ill
men belongs wholly to the Prince, and to the other magistrates: the
severest thing that the priest does is the excluding those that are
desperately wicked from joining in their worship: there is not any sort
of punishment more dreaded by them than this, for as it loads them with
infamy, so it fills them with secret horrors, such is their reverence
to their religion; nor will their bodies be long exempted from their
share of trouble; for if they do not very quickly satisfy the priests
of the truth of their repentance, they are seized on by the Senate,
and punished for their impiety. The education of youth belongs
to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them
in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all
possible methods to infuse, very early, into the tender and flexible
minds of children, such opinions as are both good in themselves and
will be useful to their country, for when deep impressions of these
things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole course
of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace of the government,
which suffers by nothing more than by vices that rise out of ill opinions.
The wives of their priests are the most extraordinary women of the whole
country; sometimes the women themselves are made priests, though that
falls out but seldom, nor are any but ancient widows chosen into that
order.

“None of the magistrates have greater honour paid them than
is paid the priests; and if they should happen to commit any crime,
they would not be questioned for it; their punishment is left to God,
and to their own consciences; for they do not think it lawful to lay
hands on any man, how wicked soever he is, that has been in a peculiar
manner dedicated to God; nor do they find any great inconvenience in
this, both because they have so few priests, and because these are chosen
with much caution, so that it must be a very unusual thing to find one
who, merely out of regard to his virtue, and for his being esteemed
a singularly good man, was raised up to so great a dignity, degenerate
into corruption and vice; and if such a thing should fall out, for man
is a changeable creature, yet, there being few priests, and these having
no authority but what rises out of the respect that is paid them, nothing
of great consequence to the public can proceed from the indemnity that
the priests enjoy.

“They have, indeed, very few of them, lest greater numbers
sharing in the same honour might make the dignity of that order, which
they esteem so highly, to sink in its reputation; they also think it
difficult to find out many of such an exalted pitch of goodness as to
be equal to that dignity, which demands the exercise of more than ordinary
virtues. Nor are the priests in greater veneration among them
than they are among their neighbouring nations, as you may imagine by
that which I think gives occasion for it.

“When the Utopians engage in battle, the priests who accompany
them to the war, apparelled in their sacred vestments, kneel down during
the action (in a place not far from the field), and, lifting up their
hands to heaven, pray, first for peace, and then for victory to their
own side, and particularly that it may be gained without the effusion
of much blood on either side; and when the victory turns to their side,
they run in among their own men to restrain their fury; and if any of
their enemies see them or call to them, they are preserved by that means;
and such as can come so near them as to touch their garments have not
only their lives, but their fortunes secured to them; it is upon this
account that all the nations round about consider them so much, and
treat them with such reverence, that they have been often no less able
to preserve their own people from the fury of their enemies than to
save their enemies from their rage; for it has sometimes fallen out,
that when their armies have been in disorder and forced to fly, so that
their enemies were running upon the slaughter and spoil, the priests
by interposing have separated them from one another, and stopped the
effusion of more blood; so that, by their mediation, a peace has been
concluded on very reasonable terms; nor is there any nation about them
so fierce, cruel, or barbarous, as not to look upon their persons as
sacred and inviolable.

“The first and the last day of the month, and of the year,
is a festival; they measure their months by the course of the moon,
and their years by the course of the sun: the first days are called
in their language the Cynemernes, and the last the Trapemernes, which
answers in our language, to the festival that begins or ends the season.

“They have magnificent temples, that are not only nobly built,
but extremely spacious, which is the more necessary as they have so
few of them; they are a little dark within, which proceeds not from
any error in the architecture, but is done with design; for their priests
think that too much light dissipates the thoughts, and that a more moderate
degree of it both recollects the mind and raises devotion. Though
there are many different forms of religion among them, yet all these,
how various soever, agree in the main point, which is the worshipping
the Divine Essence; and, therefore, there is nothing to be seen or heard
in their temples in which the several persuasions among them may not
agree; for every sect performs those rites that are peculiar to it in
their private houses, nor is there anything in the public worship that
contradicts the particular ways of those different sects. There
are no images for God in their temples, so that every one may represent
Him to his thoughts according to the way of his religion; nor do they
call this one God by any other name but that of Mithras, which is the
common name by which they all express the Divine Essence, whatsoever
otherwise they think it to be; nor are there any prayers among them
but such as every one of them may use without prejudice to his own opinion.

“They meet in their temples on the evening of the festival
that concludes a season, and not having yet broke their fast, they thank
God for their good success during that year or month which is then at
an end; and the next day, being that which begins the new season, they
meet early in their temples, to pray for the happy progress of all their
affairs during that period upon which they then enter. In the
festival which concludes the period, before they go to the temple, both
wives and children fall on their knees before their husbands or parents
and confess everything in which they have either erred or failed in
their duty, and beg pardon for it. Thus all little discontents
in families are removed, that they may offer up their devotions with
a pure and serene mind; for they hold it a great impiety to enter upon
them with disturbed thoughts, or with a consciousness of their bearing
hatred or anger in their hearts to any person whatsoever; and think
that they should become liable to severe punishments if they presumed
to offer sacrifices without cleansing their hearts, and reconciling
all their differences. In the temples the two sexes are separated,
the men go to the right hand, and the women to the left; and the males
and females all place themselves before the head and master or mistress
of the family to which they belong, so that those who have the government
of them at home may see their deportment in public. And they intermingle
them so, that the younger and the older may be set by one another; for
if the younger sort were all set together, they would, perhaps, trifle
away that time too much in which they ought to beget in themselves that
religious dread of the Supreme Being which is the greatest and almost
the only incitement to virtue.

“They offer up no living creature in sacrifice, nor do they
think it suitable to the Divine Being, from whose bounty it is that
these creatures have derived their lives, to take pleasure in their
deaths, or the offering up their blood. They burn incense and
other sweet odours, and have a great number of wax lights during their
worship, not out of any imagination that such oblations can add anything
to the divine nature (which even prayers cannot do), but as it is a
harmless and pure way of worshipping God; so they think those sweet
savours and lights, together with some other ceremonies, by a secret
and unaccountable virtue, elevate men’s souls, and inflame them
with greater energy and cheerfulness during the divine worship.

“All the people appear in the temples in white garments; but
the priest’s vestments are parti-coloured, and both the work and
colours are wonderful. They are made of no rich materials, for
they are neither embroidered nor set with precious stones; but are composed
of the plumes of several birds, laid together with so much art, and
so neatly, that the true value of them is far beyond the costliest materials.
They say, that in the ordering and placing those plumes some dark mysteries
are represented, which pass down among their priests in a secret tradition
concerning them; and that they are as hieroglyphics, putting them in
mind of the blessing that they have received from God, and of their
duties, both to Him and to their neighbours. As soon as the priest
appears in those ornaments, they all fall prostrate on the ground, with
so much reverence and so deep a silence, that such as look on cannot
but be struck with it, as if it were the effect of the appearance of
a deity. After they have been for some time in this posture, they
all stand up, upon a sign given by the priest, and sing hymns to the
honour of God, some musical instruments playing all the while.
These are quite of another form than those used among us; but, as many
of them are much sweeter than ours, so others are made use of by us.
Yet in one thing they very much exceed us: all their music, both vocal
and instrumental, is adapted to imitate and express the passions, and
is so happily suited to every occasion, that, whether the subject of
the hymn be cheerful, or formed to soothe or trouble the mind, or to
express grief or remorse, the music takes the impression of whatever
is represented, affects and kindles the passions, and works the sentiments
deep into the hearts of the hearers. When this is done, both priests
and people offer up very solemn prayers to God in a set form of words;
and these are so composed, that whatsoever is pronounced by the whole
assembly may be likewise applied by every man in particular to his own
condition. In these they acknowledge God to be the author and
governor of the world, and the fountain of all the good they receive,
and therefore offer up to him their thanksgiving; and, in particular,
bless him for His goodness in ordering it so, that they are born under
the happiest government in the world, and are of a religion which they
hope is the truest of all others; but, if they are mistaken, and if
there is either a better government, or a religion more acceptable to
God, they implore His goodness to let them know it, vowing that they
resolve to follow him whithersoever he leads them; but if their government
is the best, and their religion the truest, then they pray that He may
fortify them in it, and bring all the world both to the same rules of
life, and to the same opinions concerning Himself, unless, according
to the unsearchableness of His mind, He is pleased with a variety of
religions. Then they pray that God may give them an easy passage
at last to Himself, not presuming to set limits to Him, how early or
late it should be; but, if it may be wished for without derogating from
His supreme authority, they desire to be quickly delivered, and to be
taken to Himself, though by the most terrible kind of death, rather
than to be detained long from seeing Him by the most prosperous course
of life. When this prayer is ended, they all fall down again upon
the ground; and, after a little while, they rise up, go home to dinner,
and spend the rest of the day in diversion or military exercises.

“Thus have I described to you, as particularly as I could,
the Constitution of that commonwealth, which I do not only think the
best in the world, but indeed the only commonwealth that truly deserves
that name. In all other places it is visible that, while people
talk of a commonwealth, every man only seeks his own wealth; but there,
where no man has any property, all men zealously pursue the good of
the public, and, indeed, it is no wonder to see men act so differently,
for in other commonwealths every man knows that, unless he provides
for himself, how flourishing soever the commonwealth may be, he must
die of hunger, so that he sees the necessity of preferring his own concerns
to the public; but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything,
they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no
private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution,
so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything,
yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a
serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending
want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?
He is not afraid of the misery of his children, nor is he contriving
how to raise a portion for his daughters; but is secure in this, that
both he and his wife, his children and grand-children, to as many generations
as he can fancy, will all live both plentifully and happily; since,
among them, there is no less care taken of those who were once engaged
in labour, but grow afterwards unable to follow it, than there is, elsewhere,
of these that continue still employed. I would gladly hear any
man compare the justice that is among them with that of all other nations;
among whom, may I perish, if I see anything that looks either like justice
or equity; for what justice is there in this: that a nobleman, a goldsmith,
a banker, or any other man, that either does nothing at all, or, at
best, is employed in things that are of no use to the public, should
live in great luxury and splendour upon what is so ill acquired, and
a mean man, a carter, a smith, or a ploughman, that works harder even
than the beasts themselves, and is employed in labours so necessary,
that no commonwealth could hold out a year without them, can only earn
so poor a livelihood and must lead so miserable a life, that the condition
of the beasts is much better than theirs? For as the beasts do
not work so constantly, so they feed almost as well, and with more pleasure,
and have no anxiety about what is to come, whilst these men are depressed
by a barren and fruitless employment, and tormented with the apprehensions
of want in their old age; since that which they get by their daily labour
does but maintain them at present, and is consumed as fast as it comes
in, there is no overplus left to lay up for old age.

“Is not that government both unjust and ungrateful, that is
so prodigal of its favours to those that are called gentlemen, or goldsmiths,
or such others who are idle, or live either by flattery or by contriving
the arts of vain pleasure, and, on the other hand, takes no care of
those of a meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without
whom it could not subsist? But after the public has reaped all
the advantage of their service, and they come to be oppressed with age,
sickness, and want, all their labours and the good they have done is
forgotten, and all the recompense given them is that they are left to
die in great misery. The richer sort are often endeavouring to
bring the hire of labourers lower, not only by their fraudulent practices,
but by the laws which they procure to be made to that effect, so that
though it is a thing most unjust in itself to give such small rewards
to those who deserve so well of the public, yet they have given those
hardships the name and colour of justice, by procuring laws to be made
for regulating them.

“Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have
no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than
that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing
the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways
and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve
all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the
poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress
them as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these
contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered
as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws;
yet these wicked men, after they have, by a most insatiable covetousness,
divided that among themselves with which all the rest might have been
well supplied, are far from that happiness that is enjoyed among the
Utopians; for the use as well as the desire of money being extinguished,
much anxiety and great occasions of mischief is cut off with it, and
who does not see that the frauds, thefts, robberies, quarrels, tumults,
contentions, seditions, murders, treacheries, and witchcrafts, which
are, indeed, rather punished than restrained by the seventies of law,
would all fall off, if money were not any more valued by the world?
Men’s fears, solicitudes, cares, labours, and watchings would
all perish in the same moment with the value of money; even poverty
itself, for the relief of which money seems most necessary, would fall.
But, in order to the apprehending this aright, take one instance:—

“Consider any year, that has been so unfruitful that many thousands
have died of hunger; and yet if, at the end of that year, a survey was
made of the granaries of all the rich men that have hoarded up the corn,
it would be found that there was enough among them to have prevented
all that consumption of men that perished in misery; and that, if it
had been distributed among them, none would have felt the terrible effects
of that scarcity: so easy a thing would it be to supply all the necessities
of life, if that blessed thing called money, which is pretended to be
invented for procuring them was not really the only thing that obstructed
their being procured!

“I do not doubt but rich men are sensible of this, and that
they well know how much a greater happiness it is to want nothing necessary,
than to abound in many superfluities; and to be rescued out of so much
misery, than to abound with so much wealth: and I cannot think but the
sense of every man’s interest, added to the authority of Christ’s
commands, who, as He was infinitely wise, knew what was best, and was
not less good in discovering it to us, would have drawn all the world
over to the laws of the Utopians, if pride, that plague of human nature,
that source of so much misery, did not hinder it; for this vice does
not measure happiness so much by its own conveniences, as by the miseries
of others; and would not be satisfied with being thought a goddess,
if none were left that were miserable, over whom she might insult.
Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter, by comparing it
with the misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth
they may feel their poverty the more sensibly. This is that infernal
serpent that creeps into the breasts of mortals, and possesses them
too much to be easily drawn out; and, therefore, I am glad that the
Utopians have fallen upon this form of government, in which I wish that
all the world could be so wise as to imitate them; for they have, indeed,
laid down such a scheme and foundation of policy, that as men live happily
under it, so it is like to be of great continuance; for they having
rooted out of the minds of their people all the seeds, both of ambition
and faction, there is no danger of any commotions at home; which alone
has been the ruin of many states that seemed otherwise to be well secured;
but as long as they live in peace at home, and are governed by such
good laws, the envy of all their neighbouring princes, who have often,
though in vain, attempted their ruin, will never be able to put their
state into any commotion or disorder.”

When Raphael had thus made an end of speaking, though many things
occurred to me, both concerning the manners and laws of that people,
that seemed very absurd, as well in their way of making war, as in their
notions of religion and divine matters—together with several other
particulars, but chiefly what seemed the foundation of all the rest,
their living in common, without the use of money, by which all nobility,
magnificence, splendour, and majesty, which, according to the common
opinion, are the true ornaments of a nation, would be quite taken away—yet
since I perceived that Raphael was weary, and was not sure whether he
could easily bear contradiction, remembering that he had taken notice
of some, who seemed to think they were bound in honour to support the
credit of their own wisdom, by finding out something to censure in all
other men’s inventions, besides their own, I only commended their
Constitution, and the account he had given of it in general; and so,
taking him by the hand, carried him to supper, and told him I would
find out some other time for examining this subject more particularly,
and for discoursing more copiously upon it. And, indeed, I shall
be glad to embrace an opportunity of doing it. In the meanwhile,
though it must be confessed that he is both a very learned man and a
person who has obtained a great knowledge of the world, I cannot perfectly
agree to everything he has related. However, there are many things
in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see
followed in our governments.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UTOPIA***

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